Her tact is immense--she plunged straight into the subject without further imputation of sympathy,--her voice, full of inflections of interest and friendliness, her constrained self-control laid aside for the time. She spoke so intelligently, showing trained critical faculties--and at last my numbness began gradually to melt, and I could not help some return of sensation. There may have been soothing syrup in the fact that she must have been interested in the work, or she could not have dissected it chapter by chapter, point by point, as she was doing. She grew animated as we discussed things, and once unconsciously took off her glasses--It was like the sun coming out after days of storm clouds--her beautiful, beautiful blue eyes!--My "heart gave a bound"--(I believe that is the way to express what I mean!)--I felt a strange emotion of excitement and pleasure--I had not time to control my admiration, I expect,--for she took fright and instantly replaced them, a bright flush in her cheeks--and went on talking in a more reserved way--Alas!-- Of course then I realized that she does not wear the glasses for any reason of softening light or of defective sight, but simply to hide those blue stars and make herself unattractive--. How mysterious it all is!-- I wish I had been able to conceal the fact that I had noticed that the glasses were off--Another day I would certainly have taken advantage of this moment and would have tried to make her confess the reason of her wearing them; but some odd quality in me prevented me from reaping any advantage from this situation, so I let the chance pass.--Perhaps she was grateful to me, for she warmed up a little again. I began to feel that I might write the fool of a book right over from the beginning--and suggested to her that we should take it in detail. She acquiesced--. Then it suddenly struck me that she had not only spoken of style in writing, of method in book making--but had shown an actual knowledge of the subject of the furniture itself.--How could little Miss Sharp, a poverty stricken typist, be familiar with William and Mary furniture? She has obviously not "seen better days," and only taken up a stenographic business lately, because such proficiency as she shows, not only in this work but in account keeping and all the duties of a secretary, must have required a steady professional training. Could she have studied in Museums? But the war has been on for four years and I had gathered that she has been in Paris all that time--Even if she had left England in 1914, she could only have been eighteen or nineteen then, and girls of that age do not generally take an interest in furniture. This thought kept bothering me--and I was silent for some moments. I was weighing things up. Her voice interrupted my thoughts. "The Braxted chair has the first of the knotted fringes known"--it was saying. I had spoken of the Braxted chair--but had not recorded this fact--.