"I like it," she said, and sat silent, moving her lips. She had no wish to understand it; the sound and the mystery were enough for her, and that discovery set him dreaming. Cunningly, he dropped little fragments of knowledge that tempted her to stoop and pick them up, fit them together like a puzzle, and search for more. As if by accident the names of women of the craft slipped from his lips and, when she would know more about them, he showed her where their books stood on his shelves. She was born to a natural love of books--the feel and smell and sight of them--and the thought that men and women made them so that for centuries they should outlive their own poor human bodies was full of poetry for her. It came to her this morning like a balm, healing the wound made by that genial sailor. He did not know what she was going to be some day, in a future so remote, though shining, that effort to reach it was at present gloriously needless. She would get there; she was already soaring to the heights. She lifted her head, her hair flew free, her hands fluttered like fallen leaves before a wind, and as they are driven, so, elfishly and gaily, she danced along, restored to her belief in herself; so skilfully could Theresa in these days fit herself into the pictures she loved best. Now she was hardly concerned with the details of the life she had chosen; she knew she was to be a person; the rest was no more than the garments which were to clothe her, and fill the sailor and his kind with awe. Wind-blown, happy, hungry, she mounted homewards, climbed the garden wall, and entered the house, as she had left it, by the garden door. CHAPTER V From the end of the dark basement passage she heard the sound of someone shovelling coal. "Is that you, Bessie?" she called with a tremor in her voice, for even in the daytime the gloom had perils for her. "Bessie, is it you?" Round the cellar door a capped head appeared and vanished. "Of course it's me. Who else gets the coals--or does anything else in this 'ouse?"