Alwynne turned, on the way to her bedroom. Elsbeth's intonation was peculiar. "What do you mean?" "I don't think she'll come, Alwynne." "But I know she'll be alone----" "Well, you go and ask her." "But why do you say that--in that tone?" "I may be wrong. But I've known her longer than you have. But run along and ask her." "But why? Why?" "Oh, don't bother me, child," cried Elsbeth impatiently. "Run along and ask her." CHAPTER IX "I had a letter from Louise yesterday," announced Clare. She was curled up in a saddle-bag before the roaring golden fire, and was busy with paper and pencil. Alwynne, big with her as yet unissued invitation, sat cross-legged on the white bearskin at her feet. The floor was littered with papers and book-catalogues. At Christmas-time Clare ordered books as a housewife orders groceries, and she and Alwynne had spent a luxurious evening over her lists. The vivid flames lit up Clare's thin, lazy length, and turned the hand she held up against their heat into transparent carnelian. Her face was in shadow, but there were dancing specks of light in her sombre eyes that kept time with the leaping blaze. Clare was a sybarite over her fires. She would not endure coal or gas or stove--wood, and wood only, must be used; and she would pay any price for apple-wood, ostensibly for the quality of its flame, secretly for the mere pleasure of burning fuel with so pleasant a name; for she liked beautiful words as a child likes chocolate--a sober, acquisitive liking. She had, too, though she would not own it, a delight in destruction, costly destruction; she enjoyed the sensation of reckless power that it gave her. The trait might be morbid, but there was not a trace of pose in it; she could have enjoyed a Whittington bonfire, without needing a king to gasp applause. Yet she shivered nightly as she undressed in her cold bedroom, rather than commit the extravagance of an extra fire. She never realised the comicality of her contradictoriness, or even its existence in her character, though it qualified every act and impulse of her daily life. Her soul was, indeed, a hybrid, combining the temper of a Calvinist with the tastes of a Renascence bishop. At the moment she was in gala mood. The autumn term was but four days dead, she had not had time to tire of holidays, though, within a week, she would be bored again, and restless for the heavy work under which she affected to groan. Her chafing mind seldom allowed her indolent body much of the peace it delighted in--was ever the American in lotus-land. It was fidgeted at the moment by Alwynne's absorption in a lavishly illustrated catalogue. "Did you hear, Alwynne? A letter from Louise." Alwynne's "Oh?" was absent. It was in the years of the Rackham craze, and she had just discovered a reproduction of the _Midsummer_ Helen. "Any message?" Clare knew how to prod Alwynne. The girl glanced up amused but a little indignant.