credibly
happy--"

He was scarcely addressing her, and she said nothing. For a moment they
stood at opposite sides of a table saying nothing. Then he asked her
quickly, "But tell me, how did it seem to you? What did you think,
Katharine? Is there a chance that she likes me? Tell me, Katharine!"

Before she could answer a door opened on the landing above and disturbed
them. It disturbed William excessively. He started back, walked rapidly
into the hall, and said in a loud and ostentatiously ordinary tone:

"Good night, Katharine. Go to bed now. I shall see you soon. I hope I
shall be able to come to-morrow."

Next moment he was gone. She went upstairs and found Cassandra on the
landing. She held two or three books in her hand, and she was stooping
to look at others in a little bookcase. She said that she could never
tell which book she wanted to read in bed, poetry, biography, or
metaphysics.

"What do you read in bed, Katharine?" she asked, as they walked upstairs
side by side.

"Sometimes one thing--sometimes another," said Katharine vaguely.
Cassandra looked at her.

"D'you know, you're extraordinarily queer," she said. "Every one seems
to me a little queer. Perhaps it's the effect of London."

"Is William queer, too?" Katharine asked.

"Well, I think he is a little," Cassandra replied. "Queer, but very
fascinating. I shall read Milton to-night. It's been one of the happiest
nights of my life, Katharine," she added, looking with shy devotion at
her cousin's beautiful face.

CHAPTER XXVII

London, in the first days of spring, has buds that open and flowers that
suddenly shake their petals--white, purple, or crimson--in competition
with the display in the garden beds, although these city flowers are
merely so many doors flung wide in Bond Street and the neighborhood,
inviting you to look at a picture, or hear a symphony, or merely crowd
and crush yourself among all sorts of vocal, excitable, brightly colored
human beings. But, all the same, it is no mean rival to the quieter
process of vegetable florescence. Whether or not there is a generous
motive at the root, a desire to share and impart, or whether the
animation is purely that of insensate fervor and friction, the effect,
while it lasts, certainly encourages those who are young, and those
who are ignorant, to think the world one great bazaar, with banners
fluttering and divans heaped with spoils from every quarter of the globe
for their delight.