truth must be told, “The Decameron,” and “Tristram Shandy” more satisfying to her imagination than “The Heir of Redcliffe” or “The Daisy Chain.”  To Damaris it seemed, just now, that a book the meaning of which was quite clear to her and could be grasped at sight, hardly repaid the trouble of reading, since it afforded no sense of adventure, no excitement of challenge or of pursuit, no mirage of wonder, no delightful provocation of matters outside her experience and not understood.  About these latter she abstained from asking questions, having much faith in the illuminating power of the future.  Given patience, all in good time she would understand everything worth understanding.—­That there are things in life best not understood, or understood only at your peril, she already in some sort divined.—­Hence her reading although of the order obnoxious to pedants, as lacking in method and accurate scholarship, went to produce a mental atmosphere in which honest love of letters and of art, along with generous instincts of humanity quicken and thrive.

On this particular morning Damaris elected to explore to the Near East, in the vehicle of Eoethen’s virile and luminous prose.  She sat in one of the solid wide seated arm-chairs at the fire-place end of a long room, near a rounded window, the lower sash, of which she raised to its full height.  Outside the row of geranium beds glowed scarlet and crimson in the calm light.  Beyond them the turf of the lawn was overspread by trailing gossamers, and delicate cart-wheel spider’s webs upon which the dew still glittered.  In the shrubberies robins sang; and above the river great companies of swallows swept to and fro, with sharp twitterings, restlessly gathering for their final southern flight.

No sooner had Damaris fairly settled down with her book, than Mustapha jumped upon her knees; and after, preliminary buttings and tramplings, curled himself round in gross comfort, his soft lithe body growing warmer and heavier, on her lap, as his sleep deepened.  Where a bar of sunshine crossed the leather inset of the writing-table, just beside her in the window, Geraldine—­his counterpart as to markings and colouring, but finer made, more slender of barrel and of limb—­fitted herself into the narrow space between a silver inkstand and a stack of folded newspapers, her fore-paws tucked neatly under her chest, furry elbows outward.  Her muzzle showed black, as did the rims of her eyelids which enhanced the brightness and size of her clear, yellow-green eyes.  Her alert, observant little head was raised, as, with gently lashing tail, she watched an imprisoned honey-bee buzzing angrily up and down between the window-sashes.