Malling said that he did.

"Then come and have a cigar in my study."

"Yes, do go," said Lady Sophia. "A quiet talk with you will rest my
husband."

And she went away, leaving the two men together.

Mr. Harding's study looked out at the back of the house upon a tiny strip
of garden. It was very comfortably, though not luxuriously, furnished,
and the walls were lined with bookcases. While his host went to a drawer
to get the cigar-box, Malling idly cast his eyes over the books in the
shelves nearest to him. He always liked to see what a man had to read.
The first book his eyes rested upon was Myers's "Human Personality."
Then came a series of works by Hudson, including "Psychic Phenomena,"
then Oliver Lodge's "Survival of Man," "Man and the Universe," and "Life
and Matter." Farther along were works by Lowes Dickinson and Professor
William James, Bowden's "The Imitation of Buddha" and Inge's "Christian
Mysticism." At the end of the shelf, bound in white vellum, was Don
Lorenzo Scupoli's "The Spiritual Combat."

A drawer shut, and Mailing turned about to take the cigar which Mr.
Harding offered him.

"The light is rather strong, don't you think?" Mr. Harding said, when the
two men had lit up. "I'll lower the blind."

He did so, and they sat down in a sort of agreeable twilight, aware of
the blaze of an almost un-English sun without.