The ceiling sloped down from the centre, giving to the room the appearance of a tent. There were two lattice-windows, on opposite sides, which opened outward on to the thatch. Against one of them stood a desk, littered with papers, from which a rush-bottomed chair had been pushed back. A pen, lying on a sheet of partly written foolscap, had rolled across it, leaving blots, as if the writer had put it down and turned hastily at the sound of someone's entrance. In one corner of the room there was a high-peaked saddle and on the walls a strange collection of memories and travel--a study of a girl's head by Rossetti, old Indian muskets used in frontier warfares, a pair of sabres, a college oar with the names of the crew gilded on it, and everywhere the faces of women. Among them one face occurred often--Peter had noticed its frequence on the walls downstairs. And now he saw the living woman before him. She was dressed in white, lying on a rose-colored couch, stretched out carelessly full-length, with her small feet crossed. Her age might have been anywhere from twenty upward. It didn't matter--one forgot years and only thought of youth in looking at her. Was not Helen past mid-life when two continents went to war for her beauty? Somehow she reminded one of Helen--was it the way in which experience mixed with artlessness in her expression? The mind went back. Dr. Faustus might have addressed his sonorous lines to her: “Was this the face that launched a thousand ships? And burnt the topless towers of Ilium? Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss: Her lips suck forth my soul, see where it flies: Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again. Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips.” She was golden, splendidly negligent of what was happening about her, insolently languid with a lazy ease that seemed to take all the world into her confidence and actually shut all the world out. She was a lonely tower of snow and ice, rosy in the sunlight, luring, cold and inaccessible. Her eyes were intensely blue and innocent. She had fine teeth and an almost childish mouth, which was contradicted by the powerful molding of her chin and throat, and the capability of her hands. One wondered what difference it would make to her if she were ever to be roused by love or anger. She was built on heroic lines, long and full and gracious, yet she seemed to prefer to be treated as a plaything. One arm was curled beneath her golden head, the other hung down listlessly and was held by a man who was pressing the hand to his mouth. Peter noticed in a flash how the woman paid no attention to what the man was doing. And the man----