odwork was black as ebony, with silver lines on the panels. The floor
was polished work of parquetry, but black also. The roof was of black
wood. The house seemed to be a great coffin. Next we went into a richly
furnished dining-room. There were small windows at both ends. The
hangings here were again of the deepest purple--so dark as almost to be
black. The chairs were upholstered in the same material. All the
woodwork was ebony. The carpet was of thick folds of black pile on which
the feet fell noiselessly. M. Bourget flung open the windows and let in
some air, for it was close and breathless inside. I could feel the
Countess shudder as my hand sought and found hers.

So we passed through room after room, each as funereal as the other,
till we came to the last of all. It was to be the bedroom of the German
widow. M. Bourget, with the instinct of his nation, had arranged a
little _coup de theatre_. He flung open the door suddenly as we stood in
one of the gloomy, black-hung rooms. Instantly our eyes were almost
dazzled. This furthest room was hung with pure white. The carpet was
white; the walls and roof white as milk. All the furniture was painted
white. The act of stepping from the blackness of the tomb into this
cold, chill whiteness gave me a sense of horror for which I could not
account. It was like the horror of whiteness which sometimes comes to me
in feverish dreams.

But I was not prepared for its effects upon the Countess.

She turned suddenly and clung to my arm, trembling violently.

"O take me away from this place!" she said earnestly.

M. Bourget was troubled and anxious, but I whispered that it was only
the closeness of the rooms which made Madame feel a little faint. So we
got her out quickly into the cool bright sunshine of the Alpine
pastures. The Countess Lucia recovered rapidly, but it was a long while
before the colour came back to her cheeks.

"That terrible, terrible place!" she said again and again. "I felt as
though I were buried alive--shrouded in white, coffined in mort-cloths!"

CHAPTER XI

THE WHITE OWL

To distract her mind I told her tales of the grey city of the North
where I had been colleged. I told of the bleak and biting winds which
cut their way to the marrow of the bones. I described the students rich
and poor, but mostly poor, swarming into the gaunt quadrangles, reading
eagerly in the library, hasting grimly to be wise, posting hotfoot to
distinction or to death