CHAPTER XII

HE tower room was unlike anything else in the shabby old farm-house. It was hundreds of years old, but Kitty had employed herself in overrunning it with modernity. A staircase separated it from the rest of the house; the four narrow, deep-set windows looked out over the unkempt garden. Twilight was falling, and the scent of brier-roses invaded the still air, and filled the room with fragrance. It was the first time Anthony had been in the tower. Kitty took him to the foot of the little staircase and told him to go up and wait there while she dressed for dinner.

"It may amuse you," she said, "poking about among my things."

The rain had stopped falling. A gray mist surrounded the tower, out of which the dark shapes of the trees leaned like thick shadows. Roses climbed up above the window-sills, and swallows darted to and fro beneath them. Their nests were all about the tower.

Anthony leaned out of the window and heard the stirring of wings and the subdued movement of the leaves that

parted to receive them. He thought that Kitty was like a swallow, swift and fugitive, a restless, reckless daughter of the air; and his heart moved in him with delight to think that he might make a nest to hold her, a place of security and peace for her to rest in between her circling flights.

The inside of the tower room was curiously unlike its setting; it was full of odd colors and extravagant luxury.

It contained beautiful things, but it did not express beauty; it expressed excitement and love of physical comfort. There was a long, very soft divan covered with cushions; the colors of the cushions clashed against one another, orange and green and gold, with here and there a bizarre note of black.

Between two of the windows hung a vivid piece of Sicilian embroidery with a design of grapes and pomegranates. By the door there was a Chinese screen of very dim gold, on which a flight of storks crossed a scarlet sunset, fading into gray.

The room was too small for the treasures it held; old French porcelain, lacquer boxes, and Italian bronzes jostled one another. Nothing seemed to connect with anything else or with any idea behind itself.

A low book-case ran along the wall beneath the Sicilian altar-cloth. Anthony read the titles of the books carefully in the fading light. They were chiefly French novels of an unmistakable type. Kitty had been a great deal in France with her father; perhaps the books belonged to him. They were more like the books a.man would have chosen, a man who had no moral sense and particularly liked to have the lack of it stimulated.

Anthony did not know much about French novels, but a glance or two at them was enough to show him that they belonged to that light, evasive expression of evil that is hard to define, very expensive, and extremely disintegrating.

Anthony left the book-case and began to walk up and down. He had a curious, restless feeling, which he had not had for many weeks. It was as if he could not get out when he knew he could. It was a feeling that made him try doors and get as near as he could to windows, and it always ended in his walking to and fro as if his life depended on performing a series of vain movements.

It is a trick that prisoners learn in long confinements, and perhaps of all their habits it is the hardest to shake off.

Anthony walked up and down the little crowded room till Kitty came. By the time he heard her step he had almost forgotten where he was.

The room was nearly dark, and as Kitty opened the door she turned on the light and stood under it.

She was dressed in yellow gauze. One of the cleverest French dressmakers had designed the costume for her. It did not look as if it were a dress, but as if Kitty were a flower, an extraordinary, graceful, human flower from which the foliage had receded.

Her neck and shoulders rose bare out of the golden chiffon; the folds of it were fastened together with an amber ornament at her waist; the clinging, narrow skirt was slit up at the sides to show her slender feet and ankles; a green scarf escaped and hung behind her. A long chain of amber and green jade hung round her neck, catching and holding all the light in the room.

Kitty paused for a moment, and then moved quickly, like the passage of a sunbeam, into Anthony's arms.

Anthony no longer felt imprisoned. It seemed to him as if he had conquered space, and held all he wanted of it forever.

But as quickly as he embraced her, Kitty gently released herself. Her eyes ran swiftly over him, alive with laughter.

"We must have dinner first," she said. "How do you like my room and my dress and me? You'll have to tell me after dinner. Poor old Anthony !" Her voice had a curious quality of control in it, as if Anthony had ceased to be himself and had become merely an instrument of her will. He was dimly aware of the fact, but he did not resent it. He only wanted to express Kitty's will.

Anthony could not talk much at dinner. He ate and drank without seeing or tasting what was set before him. He was only aware of Kitty opposite him, Kitty laughing, Kitty recounting little tales of her life abroad, incidents in hotels, on railway stations. Wherever Kitty had been, incidents had naturally followed.

Kitty always talked easily without the consciousness of any effect but her own amusement. She had little vivid turns of speech that stuck in Anthony's mind, but her talking went by favor. At times she was stonily silent, and withdrew herself from any approach to expression.

To-night Anthony could not respond to her; he could not take his eyes away from her face or follow a word of what she said.

He knew her voice was music, and by the sound of it he knew that she was pleased. He was shut off from any other form of consciousness.

Peckham waited upon them silently, but her every gesture was a reproach. She put the plates down with severity, she poured out their wine as if she wished to mingle it with gall, she carried things in and out of the room with unveiled hostility; every movement of her starched apron was a remonstrance.

She wept in the pantry and she prayed in the hall; she even glanced