Simple minds may have resented the discovery that his opinions were based on his perceptions; but there was certainly no more definite charge against him than that implied in the doubt as to how he would behave in an emergency, and his company was looked upon as one of those mildly unwholesome dissipations to which the prudent may occasionally yield. It now offered itself to Glennard as an easy escape from the obsession of moral problems, which somehow could no more be worn in Flamel's presence than a surplice in the street.

 

     "Where are you going? To the club?" Flamel asked; adding, as the younger man assented, "Why not come to my studio instead? You'll see one bore instead of twenty."

 

     The apartment which Flamel described as his studio showed, as its one claim to the designation, a perennially empty easel; the rest of its space being filled with the evidences of a comprehensive dilettanteism. Against this background, which seemed the visible expression of its owner's intellectual tolerance, rows of fine books detached themselves with a prominence, showing them to be Flamel's chief care.

 

     Glennard glanced with the eye of untrained curiosity at the lines of warm-toned morocco, while his host busied himself with the uncorking of Apollinaris.

 

     "You've got a splendid lot of books," he said.

 

     "They're fairly decent," the other assented, in the curt tone of the collector who will not talk of his passion for fear of talking of nothing else; then, as Glennard, his hands in his pockets, began to stroll perfunctorily down the long line of bookcases-- "Some men," Flamel irresistibly added, "think of books merely as tools, others as tooling. I'm between the two; there are days when I use them as scenery, other days when I want them as society; so that, as you see, my library represents a makeshift compromise between looks and brains, and the collectors look down on me almost as much as the students."

 

     Glennard, without answering, was mechanically taking one book after another from the shelves. His hands slipped curiously over the smooth covers and the noiseless subsidence of opening pages. Suddenly he came on a thin volume of faded manuscript.

 

     "What's this?" he asked, with a listless sense of wonder.

 

     "Ah, you're at my manuscript shelf. I've been going in for that sort of thing lately." Flamel came up and looked over his shoulders. "That's a bit of Stendhal--one of the Italian stories-- and here are some letters of Balzac to Madame Commanville."

 

     Glennard took the book with sudden eagerness. "Who was Madame Commanville?"

 

     "His sister." He was conscious that Flamel was looking at him with the smile that was like an interrogation point. "I didn't know you cared for this kind of thing."

 

     "I don't--at least I've never had the chance. Have you many collections of letters?"

 

     "Lord, no--very few. I'm just beginning, and most of the interesting ones are out of my reach. Here's a queer little collection, though--the rarest thing I've got--half a dozen of Shelley's letters to Harriet Westbrook. I had a devil of a time getting them--a lot of collectors were after them."

 

     Glennard, taking the volume from his hand, glanced with a kind of repugnance at the interleaving of yellow cris-crossed sheets. "She was the one who drowned herself, wasn't she?"

 

     Flamel nodded. "I suppose that little episode adds about fifty per cent. to their value," he said, meditatively.

 

     Glennard laid the book down. He wondered why he had joined Flamel. He was in no humor to be amused by the older man's talk, and a recrudescence of personal misery rose about him like an icy tide.

 

     "I believe I must take myself off," he said. "I'd forgotten an engagement."

 

     He turned to go; but almost at the same moment he was conscious of a duality of intention wherein his apparent wish to leave revealed itself as a last effort of the will against the overmastering desire to stay and unbosom himself to Flamel.

 

     The older man, as though divining the conflict, laid a detaining pressure on his arm.

 

     "Won't the engagement keep? Sit down and try one of these cigars.