THE GIRL IN HIS HOUSE
are signs of you all over the house. There was a sealed tobacco-jar. Take the pipe and light it. I'm going to read you some of daddy's letters."
"But the odor of pipe tobacco?"
"I smelled a pipe the first day I entered the house, and nobody but a caretaker has been in it for years. It will always be in the curtains. Light it."
He obeyed. In truth he would have obeyed her had she asked him to take a live log from the grate with his bare hands. He did not comprehend what was happening to him.
She took an Oriental pillow—Scheherazade herself might have curled upon it once upon a time—from the lounge and dropped it between the fire and the lounge and sat down, cross-legged. She untied a bundle of letters and selected three or four. Her gown was emerald-green. On the side nearest him her throat and cheek reflected the green; on the other side the flames tinted her with rose. Her arms and shoulders were, in these changeful lights, more wonderful than any marble he had ever seen.
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