III
Late one afternoon in the last week in the month Dane sat playing and singing to himself in his study. He had on a dull red lounging robe and gay soft slippers. Behind him at the end of the room a log fire was burning low, the intermittent flames casting spurts of light across the polished case of the piano, and glittering for a second on brass candlesticks and picture glass. There were no other lights in the room.
This had been the parlour of the old mission station, but when Dane had reconstructed the house he had extended it by some eight feet, so that it was now roomy enough to contain without overcrowding a varied collection of furniture, in spite of the fact that the entire available wall space was given up to shelves of books. Against the front window, which he had had widened for the sake of light, stood an old Italian table and cabinet, the former littered with manuscript paper, a bronze ink set of curious English workmanship, a jade brush pot full of penholders, an enamel jar for tobacco, a carved red lacquer cigarette box, several pipes, a pile of paper-backed French novels, some disreputable pieces of blotting-paper, and a little ivory box in which he kept stamps. The chair here was Italian, remodelled with a soft seat of old tapestry for comfort.
There were several tables, English and Italian, littered with books, and a fine old English oak chest standing at the end of the piano. Before the fire were two chairs of the low leather smoking-room variety, and near one of them a table covered with smoking apparatus. Above the bookshelves which did not go beyond six feet up the walls were water colour and oil sketches, and black and white
