“It’s fifteenth century work, I believe,” replied St Aubyn.  “Here we are.  It really is very good of its kind, and the colours are wonderfully preserved.”

“It’s lovely!” sighed Austin, as he walked slowly up the hall, feasting his eyes once more on the beautiful fabrics.  “What a thing to live with!  Just think of having all these charming people as one’s daily companions.  I shouldn’t want them to come to life, I like them just as they are.  If they moved or spoke the charm would be broken.  Why don’t you spend hours every day in this wonderful place?”

“My dear boy, I haven’t such an imagination as you have,” answered St Aubyn, laughing.  “But as a mere artist, of course I appreciate them as much as anyone, just as I appreciate statuary or pictures.  And I prize them for their historical value too.”

Austin made no reply.  He began to look abstracted, as though listening to something else.  The sun had begun to sink on the other side of the house, leaving the hall itself in comparative shadow.

“Don’t you feel anything?” he said at last, in an undertone.

“Nothing whatever,” replied St Aubyn.  “Do you?”

“Yes.  Hush!  No—­it was nothing.  But I feel it—­all round me.  The most curious sensation.  The room’s full.  Some of them are behind me.  Don’t you feel a wind?”

“Indeed I don’t,” said St Aubyn.  “There’s not a breath stirring anywhere.”

They were standing side by side.  Austin gently put out his right hand and grasped St Aubyn’s left.

“Now don’t you feel anything?” he asked.

“Yes—­a sort of thrill.  A tingling in my arm,” replied St Aubyn.  “That’s rather strange.  But it comes from you, not from——­” He paused.

“It comes through me,” said Austin.

They stood for a few seconds in unbroken silence.  Then St Aubyn suddenly withdrew his hand.  “This is unhealthy!” he said, with a touch of abruptness.  “You must be highly magnetic.  Your organism is ‘sensitive,’ and that’s why you experience things that I don’t.”

“Oh, why did you break the spell?” cried Austin, regretfully.  “What harm could it have done you?  You said yourself just now that nothing happens that isn’t natural.  And this is natural enough, if one could only understand the way it works.”

“Many things are natural that are not desirable,” returned St Aubyn, walking up and down.  “It’s quite natural for people to go to sea, but it makes some of them sea-sick, nevertheless, and they had better stay on shore.  It’s all a matter of temperament, I suppose, and what is pleasant for you is something that my own instincts warn me very carefully to avoid.”

Austin drew his handkerchief across his eyes, as though beginning to come back to the realities of life.  “I daresay,” he said, vaguely.  “But it’s very restful here.  The air seems to make me sleepy.  I almost think—­”

At this point a servant appeared at the other end of the hall, and St Aubyn went to see what he wanted.  The next moment he returned, with quickened steps.