"Oh, well, I’ve got along without it for the past six months, so I suppose I can do it for the next sixty years. I’ve given it a good try, and in some ways I like it." "You do, do you?" "Yes, lady." "Then," she declared, in her tragic voice, "I like you." He flushed like a girl flushes, though his grin was his own specialty. "Say," he began, in confidential glee, "Miss Blair said you would—" "Tell Lydia Blair that she’s at liberty to bestow her affections when and as she chooses; but beg her to be kind enough to allow me to dispose of mine. You’d like to see her room." She was turning to begin her stone march toward the stairs, but Drinkwater held her back. "Say, lady, is it—is it her room?" "Certainly; it’s the one she’s always had when she’s been with me, and which she reserved by letter four weeks ago. I was to expect her as soon as the steamer docked." "Oh, then—" the boy began to stammer. "Nonsense, my good man! Don’t be foolish. She’s gone elsewhere and the room is to let. If she hadn’t sent me some one I would have charged her a week’s rent; but now that she’s got me a tenant she’s at liberty to go where she likes. She knows I’d rather have men than women at any time of day." "Oh, but if it’s her room, and she’s given it up for me—" "It isn’t her room; it’s mine. I can let it to any one I please. She knows of a dozen places in the city that she’ll like just as well as this, so don’t think she’ll be on the street. Come along; I’ve no time to waste." "Better go," I whispered, taking him by the arm, so that the procession started. The hall was papered in deep crimson, against which a monumental black-walnut hat-and-umbrella stand was visible chiefly because of the gleam of an inset mirror. The floors were painted in the darkest shade of brown, in keeping with the massive body of the staircase. Up the staircase, as along the hall, ran a strip of deep crimson carpet, exposing the warp on the edge of each step. A hush of solemnity lay over everything. Clearly Miss Flowerdew’s roomers were off for the day, and the place left to her and the little colored maid who had admitted us. Drinkwater and I made our way upward in a kind of awe, he clinging to my arm, frightened and yet adventurous. The long, steep stairs curved toward the top to an upper hall darker than that below, because the one window was in ground glass with a border of red and blue. Deep crimson was again the dominating color, broken only by the doors which may have been mahogany. All doors were closed except the one nearest the top of the stairs, which stood ajar. Miss Flowerdew pushed it open, bidding us follow her. We were on the spot which above all others in the world Lydia Blair called home. When the exquisite bit of jewel-weed drifted past me on the deck of the _Auvergne_ this haven was in the background of her memory.