shelves where the books should have been, and the face of an armored
soldier staring down at me from its frame over the chimney piece, where
I should have looked to see my mother's portrait, the room was a
counterpart of my old bedchamber at Appleby Hundred. There was even a
faint odor of lavender in the bed-linen; and the sense of smell, which
hath ever a better memory than any other, carried me swiftly back to my
boyhood, and to the remembrance that my mother had always kept a spray
or two of that sweet herb in her linen closet.

At the bedside there was a claw-footed table, which also had the look of
an old friend; and on it a dainty porringer, filled with cuttings of
fragrant sweetbriar. This was some womanly conceit, I said to myself;
and then I laughed, though the laugh set a pair of wolf's jaws at work
on my shoulder. For you must know that I had lived the full half of King
David's span of three-score and ten years, and more, and what womanly
softness had fallen to my lot had been well got and paid for.

I closed my eyes the better to remember what had befallen, and when I
opened them again was fain to wonder if the moment of back-reaching
stood not for some longer time. In the deep bay of the window was a
great chair of Indian wickerwork, and I could have sworn it had but now
been empty. Yet when I looked again a woman sat in it.

Now of a truth I had seen this woman's face but twice; and once it wore
a smile of teasing mockery and once was full of terror; but I thought I
should live long and suffer much before the winsome challenging beauty
of it would let me be as I had been before I had looked upon it.

She knew not that I was awake and slaking the thirst of my eyes upon the
sweetness of her, and so I saw her then as few ever saw her, I think,