All that evening, something which he had not been conscious of noticing especially when it was present to him--certainly he had paid no conscious attention to its details--kept recurring and recurring to Peter's memory: the appearance of the prettily-arranged terrace-end at Ventirose: the white awning, with the blue sky at its edges, the sunny park beyond; the warm-hued carpets on the marble pavement; the wicker chairs, with their bright cushions; the table, with its books and bibelots--the yellow French books, a tortoise-shell paperknife, a silver paperweight, a crystal smelling-bottle, a bowlful of drooping poppies; and the marble balustrade, with its delicate tracery of leaves and tendrils, where the jessamine twined round its pillars. This kept recurring, recurring, vividly, a picture that he could see without closing his eyes, a picture with a very decided sentiment. Like the gay and gleaming many-pinnacled facade of her house, it seemed appropriate to her; it seemed in its fashion to express her. Nay, it seemed to do more. It was a corner of her every-day environment; these things were the companions, the witnesses, of moments of her life, phases of herself, which were hidden from Peter; they were the companions and witnesses of her solitude, her privacy; they were her confidants, in a way. They seemed not merely to express her, therefore, but to be continually on the point--I had almost said of betraying her. At all events, if he could only understand their silent language, they would prove rich in precious revelations. So he welcomed their recurrences, dwelt upon them, pondered them, and got a deep if somewhat inarticulate pleasure from them. On Thursday, as he approached the castle, the last fires of sunset were burning in the sky behind it--the long irregular mass of buildings stood out in varying shades of blue, against varying, dying shades of red: the grey stone, dark, velvety indigo; the pink stucco, pink still, but with a transparent blue penumbra over it; the white marble, palely, scintillantly amethystine. And if he was interested in her environment, now he could study it to his heart's content: the wide marble staircase, up which he was shown, with its crimson carpet, and the big mellow painting, that looked as if it might be a Titian, at the top; the great saloon, in which he was received, with its polished mosaic floor, its frescoed ceiling, its white-and-gold panelling, its hangings and upholsteries of yellow brocade, its satinwood chairs and tables, its bronzes, porcelains, embroideries, its screens and mirrors; the long dining-hall, with its high pointed windows, its slender marble columns supporting a vaulted roof, its twinkling candles in chandeliers and sconces of cloudy Venetian glass, its brilliant table, its flowers and their colours and their scents.