“That, oddly enough, was also in my mind,” he said, smiling too. “Come into my study and find it for yourself.” He was conscious of a little pleasant excitement as they went, and also of a curious uncertainty as to whether he wanted the experiment to succeed or not. Ruth went in front of him through the French window and stood for a while looking round her. She was not a slow woman, but nothing she did ever seemed hurried. “What a delicious room!” she said. “And what a glory of books! And I do like the way you have your writing-table. How much better than across the window, and yet you get all the light. I may poke about?” “Of course.” She moved the writing-table and picked up a quaint letter-weight with interest. The photograph she ignored. “I love your writing-chair,” she said. “It was my grandfather’s. The only bit I have of his. My parents cleared out the whole lot when they married—too awful, wasn’t it?” “But your books are wonderful! Surely you have many first editions here. Old Raphael would have loved them.” “The best of my first editions are on the right of the fireplace.” She turned, and then suddenly her face lit. Lit up curiously, as if there were a light behind it. “Oh!” she said quite softly, then crossed to the fireplace and stood looking at the photograph he had moved that afternoon from the writing-table. She did not pick it up or touch it; only looked at it with wide eyes for quite a long time. Then she turned to him. “That is the man I saw,” she said. “Now will you believe?” And at that moment the Horizon beyond Eternity did indeed approach closer, approach into the realm of the possible. He admitted nothing, and she did not press it. She sat down in the big armchair on the small corner left by Larry, who was curled up in it asleep. He shifted a little to make more room for her and laid a gentle feathered paw upon her knee. “That’s odd,” said North. “He won’t let anyone else come near my chair when he’s in it.” “He knows I’m a link,” said Ruth, smiling. “I wish you could look on me as that too.” “I do—but for purposes of research only. You mustn’t drive me too quickly.” “I won’t. Indeed I won’t.” She spoke with the earnestness of a child who has asked a favour. “I only want you just not to shut it all out.” “I’m interested, and that is as far as I can go at present. I wondered if you would care to read a bit of Dick’s diary which I have here. It came to me with other papers, and there are some letters here.” “Oh!” The exclamation was full of interest and pleasure. He gave her the small packet, smiling, and she held it between both her hands for a moment looking at it. “They will be very sacred to me,” she said. He nodded. “One feels like that. It is only a small portion of a diary. I fancy he kept one very intermittently. Dick was never a writer. But the letter about von Schäde will interest you.”