to me, as I turned the handle of
the door marked by my brown footgear, that the room now appeared farther
to the left, along the passage, than I had the impression of its being.
I opened the door, which was not locked, walked in, felt about for the
electric light, switched it on, and had sauntered over to a table in the
centre of the room before I noticed anything strange. Then, to my
startled vision appeared unfamiliar brushes and combs on a chest of
drawers; beautiful, but manly looking silver-backed ones; and along the
wall was a row of flat tweed legs, on stretchers.

For an instant I stood still, bewildered, as if I'd walked into a dream,
beguiled by a false clue of boots; and during my few seconds of
temporary aberration my dazed eyes fell upon a book which lay on the
table. It was Sir Lionel's "Morte d'Arthur" (second volume; he's lent me
the first), and in it for a marker was a _glove of mine_. I'd lost it at
Torquay, after we had our dear, good talk, and he knew I was looking for
it, all about the sitting room we had at the hotel there, yet he never
said a word.

Oh, dear little French mother, you can't think what an odd feeling it
gave me to see he had kept my glove, and had put it in his book! Yes, I
believe you _can_ think, too, because probably you've felt just like
that yourself when you were a girl, only you never thought it
_convenable_ to describe your symptoms for your daughter's benefit. I
know it was perfectly schoolgirlish of me, and I ought to have outgrown
such sentimentality with my teens; but if you could see Sir Lionel, and
understand the sort of man he is, you wouldn't think me so outrageous.
That he--he, of all men--should care to keep anything which would remind
him of an insignificant child like me! I'm afraid there came a prickly
feeling in my eyelids, and I had the most idiotic desire to kiss the
book, which I knew would have a nice smell of his cigarettes, because my
borrowed volume has. Of course, I wouldn't have done it for anything,
though, so don't think I'm worse than I am. And really, really, I don't
believe I'm exactly in love. I hope I'm not so foolish. It's just a kind
of infatuated fascination of a moth--not for a candle, but for a great,
brilliant motor lamp. I've seen them at night dashing themselves against
the glass of our Bleriots once or twice when we've been out late, and I
know how hopelessly they smash their soft, silly wings. I should have
been like them if I'd kisse