and, and
they sat in silence until Mrs. Payne swept down upon them in her sable
wraps and demanded the attendance of her husband.

The hall door closed upon the sisters before Laura had quite come back
from her abstraction, which she did at last with a sigh of relief at
finding herself alone. Then, leaving Uncle Percival nodding in the
library, she went upstairs to the cosy little study which opened from
her bedroom on the floor above. The wood fire on the brass andirons was
unlighted, and striking a match she held it to the little pile of
splinters underneath the logs, watching, with a sensation of pleasure,
the small yellow flames lick the crumpled paper and curl upward. Rising
after a moment, she stood breathing in the soft twilight-coloured
atmosphere she loved. The place was her own and she kept it carefully
guarded from a too garish daylight, while the beloved familiar
objects--the shining rows of books, the dull greenish hangings, the
costly cushioned easy-chairs, the few rare photographs, the spacious
writing table and the single Venetian vase of flowers--were always
steeped in a softly shadowed half-tone of light.

As she looked about her the comfort of the room entered into her like
warmth, and, opening her arms in a happy gesture, she threw herself
among the pillows of the couch and lay watching the rapid yellow flames.
Even in the midst of her musing she laughed suddenly to find that she
was thinking of the phrase with which Funsten had dismissed the name of
Arnold Kemper: "The only favourable thing one can say of him is to say
nothing." Was it really so bad as that she wondered, with a dim memory
that somewhere, back in an obscure corner of her bookshelves, lay his
first thin, promising volume published now almost fifteen years ago.
Rising presently, she began a hasty search among a collection of little
novels which had been banished ignominiously from the light of day, and,
coming at last upon the story, she brought it to the lamp and commenced
a reading prompted solely by the moment's impetuous curiosity. Utterly
devoid as it was of literary finish or discerning craftsmanship, the
book gripped from the start by sheer audacity--by its dominant,
insistent, almost brutal and entirely misdirected power. It was less the
story that struck one than the personal equation between the lines, and
the impression she brought away from her breathless skimming was that
she had encountered the shock of a tremendous masc