He stood for a moment gazing into vacancy with a half-tender, half-cynical smile on his lips. Then he extinguished the lamp, called Olga from her resting-place on the old divan, and went slowly to bed. CHAPTER XV Herrick duly sent Toni a list of such books as he thought suitable for her purpose; and then began for Toni a succession of long and, if the truth be told, tedious days spent, in Owen's absence, in the quiet, stately library, while the August sunshine streamed in through the big mullioned windows, and turned the books, in their many-hued bindings, into pools of rich, dim colour, lighted here and there with the flash of gold, the gleam of purple and scarlet. Toni used to wish, half-rebelliously, that the sun would not shine in so gloriously, turning the polished floor into a golden sea, and bathing her, as she sat at the table, in a flood of dancing sunbeams. It was so hard to sit there reading, trying in vain to dig out the heart of some book of old stories, sagas and the like, or struggling helplessly to understand a poem written in lovely but surely incomprehensible metaphors, and full of words which, though she realized their beauty, still conveyed little to her intelligence. Herrick had perhaps slightly over-estimated her powers. He had never before come in contact with quite such an undeveloped mind. His own married life had been too short for him to grasp fully the characteristics of his wife, and although in some respects she had not been unlike Toni, she had been differently educated. Her mind had perhaps little depth, but she was quick and versatile; and owing to her surroundings she had been able, always, to adopt the shibboleth of the social set to which she belonged by right of birth. So it was that Herrick, with all his sympathy, all his intuition, failed to plumb the shallows of Toni's mind. He gave her Rossetti when he should have given her Ella Wheeler Wilcox; and George Eliot when he should have introduced her to Jane Austen and her gentle sister, Miss Burney. The "Idylls of the King," clothed in Tennyson's poetic garments, would have won her interest--instead he advised her to read Malory, and read him she obediently did, until her brain ached with the clash of swords, and her eyes were wearied with the glitter of the dragons' scales or the silver mail of the knights who fought to the death for the damsels they served. Knowing her love of outdoor life, he sent her to Borrow, but even "Lavengro" failed to charm the lonely student, to whom the sun, the moon, the stars were all "sweet things" indeed, when no printed page intervened between her and their sweetness. It was weary work, toiling there day after day, while the river flashed and gleamed in the sunlight, and Jock ran barking hither and thither under the windows, as though imploring her to leave those musty haunts and come to chase the elusive yellow sunbeams on the lawn.