This too was pleasant. To be precious in the sight of those who serve you lends a singular graciousness to the conduct of daily life. Laurence felt at harmony with himself and his surroundings, and with that sense of harmony arose certain stirrings of hope. During the days and nights of the past week, while the great ship ploughed her way eastward across the mighty ridge and furrow of the Atlantic, he had not been wholly unconscious of that hope--the hope that even now all might not be over, and that he might once again be blessed by the vision, for however brief a space, of his dear fairy-lady. Yet he had kept that hope under with a stern hand. It was present, but at the postern gate, so to speak, of the castle of his reason and his will. He kept it there, doing his heart much violence by refusing it admittance and entertainment, since he knew that, once admitted, it would have proved so dangerously absorbing and alluring a guest. He tried to deny it admittance still; yet he shuffled a little with his own conscience, permitting himself a renewing of the routine which had marked his former sojourn at Stoke Rivers. He dressed, dined, and waited until the twilight had very sensibly closed in before visiting that which might remain of the room of mysterious and enchanted meetings. The near end of the corridor offered no noticeable signs of disturbance or injury. Still it appeared to Laurence that, as on a former occasion, a spirit of disorder, the winnowing wings of a profound and elemental fear, had but lately swept through it. He could have imagined the sightless, marble faces of the Roman emperors less impassive, less wholly scornful, their heads carried with something less of arrogant and invincible pride. An acrid odour of burned stuffs, burned woodwork, pervaded the place. He had cabled instructions that nothing might be removed, nothing renovated before his arrival. The tapestry curtain still hung in its accustomed position; but it was blackened and shrivelled to the obliteration of the figures wrought upon it. The satyr no longer leered, from his monticule, upon the naked and reluctant woman hurried towards him by the company of naughty loves. Tongues of fire had licked away that pictured wantonness and purged its offence.