Her hand rested for a moment on his shoulder with a caressing touch; anon, humming a little tune under her breath, and followed by Spartan, who never let her go out of his sight for a moment if he could help it, she left the room. Ascending the staircase, she stopped on the threshold of her study and looked in with a vague air, as though the place had suddenly grown unfamiliar. There, immediately facing her, smiled the pictured lineaments of Shakespeare, that immortal friend of man; her favourite books greeted her with all the silent yet persuasive eloquence of their well-known and deeply-honoured titles; the electric lights, fitted up to represent small stars in the ceiling, were not turned on, and only the young moon peered glimmeringly through the lattice window, shedding a pale lustre on the marble features of the ‘Antinous.’ Standing quite still, she gazed at all these well-known objects of her daily surroundings with a curious sense of strangeness, Spartan staring up wonderingly at her the while. ‘What is it that is wrong with me?’ she mused. ‘Why do I feel as if I were suddenly thrust out of my usual peace, and made to take a part in the common and mean disputes of petty-minded men and women?’ She waited another minute, then apparently conquering whatever emotion was at work within her, she pressed the ivory handle which diffused light on all visible things, and entered the room with a quiet step and a half-penitent look, as of regret for having given offence to some invisible spirit-monitor. ‘Oh, you dear, dear friends!’ she said, approaching the bookshelves, and softly apostrophising the volumes ranged there as if they were sentient personages, ‘I am afraid I do not consult you half enough! You are always with me, ready to give me the soundest advice on any subject under the sun; advice founded on sage experience, too! Tell me something now, out of your stores of wisdom, to stop this foolish little aching at my heart—this irritating, selfish, suspicious trouble which is quite unworthy of me, as it is unworthy of anyone who has had the high privilege of learning great lessons from such teachers as you are! It is not as if I were a woman whose sole ideas of life are centred on dress and domesticity, or one of those unhappy, self-tormenting creatures who cannot exist without admiration and flattery; I am, I think and hope, differently constituted, and mean to try for great things, even if I never succeed in attaining them. But in trying for greatness, one must not descend to littleness—save me from this danger, my dear old-world comrades, if you can, for to-night I am totally unlike myself. There are thoughts in my brain that might have excited Xantippe, but which should never trouble Delicia, if to herself Delicia prove but true!’