After luncheon they sat in the library, and for a time in silence, Bylant enjoying his cigar, his eyes roving appreciatively over the walls of books. It was a completely satisfying relic of the past, that old manor library, collected by men who had been intellectual in their own ponderous way; and an inimitable background for this spirited, rebellious, neoteric descendant who had inherited their handsome high-bred shell and cast out their prejudices, packing the space with idiosyncrasies of her own. Gita followed his glance. “Those old tomes are pretty dull,” she said with a sigh. “But I learned something of the history of each of the countries I lived in—France, Belgium, Germany, Italy; we were even in England once for a few months—and it is time I knew more. I’m frightfully ignorant. I like history and biographies better than anything, but I must say it’s rather hard to lose oneself in musty pages covered with brown spots like freckles, and long esses. I don’t believe a Carteret bought a book later than 1830. But I peg away at it for two hours every evening, and on rainy days I yawn over them by the hour. I’ve made a virtuous resolution not to read a novel for six months.” “I’ll send you some of the modern histories and biographies. They are equally—perhaps more—authentic, and their writers belong to this generation of the quick and are more fearful of dullness than of crime. Dullness is a crime, for that matter, for it has slaughtered more brains than excess.” But he had no intention of discussing books with her. It should be another bond between them in the future and the fertile cause of frequent association; but the mood of the morning was still on her, her intoxicated ego still danced in those magnificent eyes, and he needed little adroitness to lead her to enlarge upon certain incidents of her past which, he protested, she had brushed aside too lightly to satisfy a greedy psychologist. Gita was not slow to understand that she was the most interesting study that had ever swum within the ken of this multifariously experienced novelist, and she rose to the bait. He also gave her a more detailed account of his own life, particularly before the sudden death of his mother eight years ago; and if, when they finally parted, she did not feel that she knew him better, and he her, than anyone either of them had known in this life of many acquaintances and few friends, it was, he told himself grimly, through no fault of his. “You’ll see me again in a day or two,” he said as they shook hands in the garden, whither they had migrated as the sun rode to the west. “I’m going to New York tomorrow to make a choice selection among my books for your delectation. May I bring them over on Friday?”