She opened the door, and took up one of the lighted candles. "Then you will step this way. He's in the study."
Again Carron recognized the unexpected—that Rader was to be found in a study instead of in an office. It seemed, not only that hotels had lives out of season, but that their owners had lives outside of hotel-keeping. Mrs. Rader's candle led down a long, black passage. The flame threw no smaller light on the darkness than her chance phrases and expressions had thrown on the possibilities of her husband's personality. But there had been glimpses out of the obscurity in passing—such gleams as the candle caught from window-panes, or pine branches beyond them—chance illuminations of words upon individualities, that put edge to Carron's anxiety.
The light, which had led him like a will-o'-the-wisp, stopped now at a door, closing the end of thepassage. This, Mrs. Rader knocked upon, and, after a moment, opened. "Some one to see you," she said to one inside, and Carron stepped over the worn threshold, down a worn step into a little round room; and found himself facing Rader, who had risen from his chair, and, with his glasses gleaming above the high arch of his brow, with his shadow towering on the wall behind him, was looking out at Carron from twilight walls of books.
29
