lose his grasp on the idea of a corrective. This idea however
was luckily all before him again from the moment he crossed the
threshold of the little entresol of the Quartier Marboeuf into which
she had gathered, as she said, picking them up in a thousand flights
and funny little passionate pounces, the makings of a final nest. He
recognised in an instant that there really, there only, he should find
the boon with the vision of which he had first mounted Chad's stairs.
He might have been a little scared at the picture of how much more, in
this place, he should know himself "in" hadn't his friend been on the
spot to measure the amount to his appetite. Her compact and crowded
little chambers, almost dusky, as they at first struck him, with
accumulations, represented a supreme general adjustment to
opportunities and conditions. Wherever he looked he saw an old ivory
or an old brocade, and he scarce knew where to sit for fear of a
misappliance. The life of the occupant struck him of a sudden as more
charged with possession even than Chad's or than Miss Barrace's; wide
as his glimpse had lately become of the empire of "things," what was
before him still enlarged it; the lust of the eyes and the pride of
life had indeed thus their temple. It was the innermost nook of the
shrine--as brown as a pirate's cave. In the brownness were glints of
gold; patches of purple were in the gloom; objects all that caught,
through the muslin, with their high rarity, the light of the low
windows. Nothing was clear about them but that they were precious, and
they brushed his ignorance with their contempt as a flower, in a
liberty taken with him, might have been whisked under his nose. But
after a full look at his hostess he knew none the less what most
concerned him. The circle in which they stood together was warm with
life, and every question between them would live there as nowhere else.
A question came up as soon as they had spoken, for his answer, with a
laugh, was quickly: "Well, they've got hold of me!" Much of their
talk on this first occasion was his development of that truth. He was
extraordinarily glad to see her, expressing to her frankly what she
most showed him, that one might live for years without a blessing
unsuspected, but that to know it at last for no more than three days
was to need it or miss it for ever. She was the blessing that had now
become his need, and what could prove it better than that without her
he had