Grateful for her evident intention to waste no time, St. George dressed and drove to the Boris, punctually sending up his card at four o’clock.  At once he was ushered to Mrs. Hastings’ apartment.

St. George entered her drawing-room incuriously.  Three years of entering drawing-rooms which he never thereafter was to see had robbed him of that sensation of indefinable charm which for many a strange room never ceases to yield.  He had found far too many tables upholding nothing which one could remember, far too many pictures that returned his look, and rugs that seemed to have been selected arbitrarily and because there was none in stock that the owner really liked.  He was therefore pleasantly surprised and puzzled by the room which welcomed him.  The floor was tiled in curious blocks, strangely hieroglyphed, as if they had been taken from old tombs.  Over the fireplace was set a panel of the same stone, which, by the thickness of the tiles, formed a low shelf.  On this shelf and on tables and in a high window was the strangest array of objects that St. George had ever seen.  There were small busts of soft rose stone, like blocks of coral.  There was a statue or two of some indefinable white material, glistening like marble and yet so soft that it had been indented in several places by accidental pressure.  There were fans of strangely-woven silk, with sticks of carven rock-crystal, and hand mirrors of polished copper set in frames of gems that he did not recognize.  Upon the wall were mended bits of purple tapestry, embroidered or painted or woven in singular patterns of flora and birds that St. George could not name.  There were rolls of parchment, and vases of rock-crystal, and a little apparatus, most delicately poised, for weighing unknown, delicate things; and jars and cups without handles, all baked of a soft pottery having a nap like the down of a peach.  Over the windows hung curtains of lace, woven by hands which St. George could not guess, in patterns of such freedom and beauty as western looms never may know.  On the floor and on the divans were spread strange skins, some marked like peacocks, some patterned like feathers and like seaweed, all in a soft fur that was like silk.

Mingled with these curios were the ordinary articles of a cultivated household.  There were many books, good pictures, furniture with simple lines, a tea-table that almost ministered of itself, a work-basket filled with “violet-weaving” needle-work, and a gossipy clock with well-bred chimes.  St. George was enormously attracted by the room which could harbour so many pagan delights without itself falling their victim.  The air was fresh and cool and smelled of the window primroses.

[Illustration]