I could scarcely believe them when I did. I was lying on a couch in a room,--small, indeed, but beyond exception the loveliest I had ever seen. At first I was only aware of an exquisite harmony of color, and could not have told of what it was composed. The place was lighted by a soft lamp that hung in the middle; and when my eyes went up to see where it was fastened, I found the ceiling marvellous in deep blue, with a suspicion of green, just like some of the shades of a peacock's feathers, with a multitude of gold and red stars upon it. What the walls were I could not for some time tell, they were so covered with pictures and sketches; against one was a lovely little set of book-shelves filled with books, and on a little carved table stood a vase of white hot-house flowers, with one red camellia. One picture had a curtain of green silk before it, and by its side hung the wounded knight whom his friends were carrying home to die. "O my Percivale!" I cried, and could say no more. "Do you like it?" he asked quietly, but with shining eyes. "Like it?" I repeated. "Shall I like Paradise when I get there? But what a lot of money it must have cost you!" "Not much," he answered; "not more than thirty pounds or so. Every spot of paint there is from my own brush." "O Percivale!" I must make a conversation of it to tell it at all; but what I really did say I know no more than the man in the moon. "The carpet was the only expensive thing. That must be as thick as I could get it; for the floor is of stone, and must not come near your pretty feet. Guess what the place was before." "I should say, the flower of a prickly-pear cactus, full of sunlight from behind, which a fairy took the fancy to swell into a room." "It was a shed, in which the sculptor who occupied the place before me used to keep his wet clay and blocks of marble." "Seeing is hardly believing," I said. "Is it to be my room? I know you mean it for my room, where I can ask you to come when I please, and where I can hide when any one comes you don't want me to see." "That is just what I meant it for, my Ethelwyn,--and to let you know what I _would_ do for you if I could." "I hate the place, Percivale," I said. "What right has it to come poking in between you and me, telling me what I know and have known--for, well, I won't say how long--far better than even you can tell me?" He looked a little troubled. "Ah, my dear!" I said, "let my foolish words breathe and die." I wonder sometimes to think how seldom I am in that room now. But there it is; and somehow I seem to know it all the time I am busy elsewhere. He made me shut my eyes again, and carried me into the study. "Now," he said, "find your way to your own room."