comforted her to an extent that brought a return of appetite; and
she rang for luncheon, and ate it with the healthy nonchalance usually so
characteristic of her and her sisters.

"Now," she reflected, "I'll have to wait an hour for my bath"--one of the
inculcated principles of domestic hygiene. So, rising, she strolled
across the gymnasium, casting about for something interesting to do.

She looked out of the back windows. In New York the view from back
windows is not imposing.

Tiring of the inartistic prospect she sauntered out and downstairs to see
what her maid might be about. Bowles was sewing; Sybilla looked on for a
while with languid interest, then, realizing that a long day of
punishment was before her, that she deserved it, and that she ought to
perform some act of penance, started contritely for the library with
resolute intentions toward Henry James.

As she entered she noticed that the bookshelves, reaching part way to the
ceiling, were shrouded in sheets. Also she encountered a pair of
sawhorses overlaid with boards, upon which were rolls of green flock
paper, several pairs of shears, a bucket of paste, a large, flat brush, a
knife and a T-square.

"The paper hanger man," she said. "He's gone to lunch. I'll have time to
seize on Henry James and flee."

Now Henry James, like some other sacred conventions, was, in that
library, a movable feast. Sometimes he stood neatly arranged on one
shelf, sometimes on another. There was no counting on Henry.

Sybilla lifted the sheets from the face of one case and peered closer.
Henry was not visible. She lifted the sheets from another case; no Henry;
only G.P.R., in six dozen rakish volumes.

Sybilla peeped into a third case. Then a very unedifying thing occurred.
Surely, surely, this was Sybilla's disobedient day. She saw a forbidden
book glimmering in old, gilded leather--she saw its classic back turned
mockingly toward her--the whole allure of the volume was impudent, dog-
eared, devil-may-care-who-reads-me.

She took it out, replaced it, looked hard, hard for Henry, found him not,
glanced sideways at the dog-eared one, took a step sideways.

"I'll just see where it was printed," she said to herself, drawing out
the book and backing off hastily--so hastily that she came into collision
with the sawhorse table, and the paste splashed out of the bucket.

But Sybilla paid no heed; she was examining the title page of old Dog-
ear: a rather wonderful title pa