Betty, her eyes filled with tears, put out her dainty milk-white hand, with rosy fingers, to the dead eyelids and drew down the blinds that curtained the windows of the departed soul. In the deepening dusk, Betty went out to find Eustace Lovegood.... She mounted the bare creaking stairs to his lodgings, and reaching his high attic, was glad to hear his deep-voiced growl to enter at her knocking. The big man, in a threadbare dressing-gown, arose, with his wonted grand manner, to welcome her; and when he saw who was his visitor his heavy face was lighted with a smile: “Mistress Betty!” said he--“by all that’s charming!” He came to her and, the greetings over, with courtly etiquette led her to his chair--it was the only one in all the bare room. “You look serious,” he said--“sit down and tell me.” Betty hesitated: “There is something on fire--a smell of paper burning,” she said. Lovegood laughed his big laugh: “I am making coffee,” he said. She saw that the kettle in the narrow fireplace was being heated by burning balls of crumpled manuscript. “But why do you heat the kettle with paper?” she asked. He smiled drily: “Ah, Betty--you push me to the extremity of truth. Well, it is because I have nothing else to burn.... Only my rejected poems. And I am badly in need of the coffee. The weather is very severe.” Betty’s eyes filled with tears: “I am sorry,” she said. “Tut, tut! you mustn’t damp the spirits of the kettle, Betty--it begins to boil.... Wonderfully heating thing--poetry!” He went to the kettle. “You shall have first brew,” he added--“that you may never again despise coffee warmed by the passionate glow of verse.... There is a dearth of cups--and my landlady has a gouty leg--and the journeyings of the little maid-of-all-work make my heart ache--but I usurp the news.” As the big man busied himself with his hospitalities, Betty told him of her errand--begged him to come back with her and give his counsel and aid. He was for going straight away; but she insisted on sitting there until he had drunk his coffee. At the threshold, across the steps of the house, in the twilight of the silent street, lay the dead body of the Man of Pallid Ideals--a nosegay of pale flowers near his gloved hand, his white face turned upwards to the still skies, lit by the pale light of the mystic moon. He had seen the drawn blinds--guessed their significance--gone to her doors, stunned with dread--fallen in the moment of his last act of homage.... OF THE BLOSSOMING OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE CHAPTER XLVI _Wherein the Husband of the Concierge fears that he is growing Blind_ Darkness was stealing over the city, and Paris was taking a drowsy breath in the twilight before awakening to her evening gaiety and frolic mood.