to what kingdom it belonged--vegetable, animal or artificial.

Hartley pressed the "McComus" button. The door latch clicked
spasmodically--now hospitably, now doubtfully, as though in
anxiety whether it might be admitting friends or duns. Hartley
entered and began to climb the stairs after the manner of those who
seek their friends in city flat-houses--which is the manner of a boy
who climbs an apple-tree, stopping when he comes upon what he wants.

On the fourth floor he saw Vivienne standing in an open door. She
invited him inside, with a nod and a bright, genuine smile. She
placed a chair for him near a window, and poised herself gracefully
upon the edge of one of those Jekyll-and-Hyde pieces of furniture that
are masked and mysteriously hooded, unguessable bulks by day and
inquisitorial racks of torture by night.

Hartley cast a quick, critical, appreciative glance at her before
speaking, and told himself that his taste in choosing had been
flawless.

Vivienne was about twenty-one. She was of the purest Saxon type. Her
hair was a ruddy golden, each filament of the neatly gathered mass
shining with its own lustre and delicate graduation of colour. In
perfect harmony were her ivory-clear complexion and deep sea-blue eyes
that looked upon the world with the ingenuous calmness of a mermaid or
the pixie of an undiscovered mountain stream. Her frame was strong
and yet possessed the grace of absolute naturalness. And yet with all
her Northern clearness and frankness of line and colouring, there
seemed to be something of the tropics in her--something of languor
in the droop of her pose, of love of ease in her ingenious complacency