o back on my word."

"No, I suppose you've got to stick to it. Unless, of course, your
father interferes."

"Father never interferes. Did you ever know him in his life refuse me
anything I wanted?"

"I can't say I ever did." Kitty's tone intimated that perhaps it would
have been better if he sometimes had. "Still, Sir Frederick objects
strongly to people who interfere with him, and he may not care to have
the young Savage poet, or poet Savage, hanging about."

"Father? He won't mind a bit. He says he's going to take part of the
Palazzo Barberini for six months. It's big enough to hold fifty
poets."

"Not big enough to hold one like Mr. Savage Keith Rickman." Kitty rose
to her feet; she stood majestic, for the spirit of prophecy was upon
her; she gathered herself together for the deliverance of her soul.
"You say he won't be in the way. He will. He'll be most horribly in
the way. He'll go sliding and falling all over the place, and dashing
cups of coffee on the marble floor of the Palazzo; he'll wind his feet
in the tails of your best gowns, not out of any malice, but in sheer
nervous panic; he'll do unutterable things with soup--I can see him
doing them."

"I can't."

"No. I know you can't. I don't say you've no imagination; but I _do_
say you're deficient in a certain kind of profane fancy."

CHAPTER XXVI

It was extraordinary; if he had given himself time to reflect on it he
might even have considered it uncanny, the peace that had settled on
him with regard to the Harden Library.

It remained absolutely unshaken by the growing agitation of his
father's letters. Isaac wrote reproachfully, irritably, frantically,
and received only the briefest, most unsatisfactory replies. "I can't
tell you anything more than I have. But I wouldn't be in a hurry to
make any arrangements with Pilkington, if I were you." Not the
smallest reference to the Aldine Plato, the Neapolitan Horace or the
_Aurea Legenda_ of Wynkyn de Worde.

Why indeed should he trouble himself? He couldn't understand his
father's state of mind. He had now a positive intuition that Sir
Frederick would recover in the manner of a gentleman whose motto was
_Invictus_; an infinite assurance was conveyed by that tilted
faun-like smile. He even found himself believing in his own delightful
future as Miss Harden's private secretary, so entirely had he
submitted to the empire of divine possibility.

Meanwhile he redoubled his attentions to the ca