side hung the wounded knight whom his friends were carrying home to die.

"O my Percivale!" I cried, and could say no more.

"Do you like it?" he asked quietly, but with shining eyes.

"Like it?" I repeated. "Shall I like Paradise when I get there? But what a
lot of money it must have cost you!"

"Not much," he answered; "not more than thirty pounds or so. Every spot of
paint there is from my own brush."

"O Percivale!"

I must make a conversation of it to tell it at all; but what I really did
say I know no more than the man in the moon.

"The carpet was the only expensive thing. That must be as thick as I could
get it; for the floor is of stone, and must not come near your pretty feet.
Guess what the place was before."

"I should say, the flower of a prickly-pear cactus, full of sunlight from
behind, which a fairy took the fancy to swell into a room."

"It was a shed, in which the sculptor who occupied the place before me used
to keep his wet clay and blocks of marble."

"Seeing is hardly believing," I said. "Is it to be my room? I know you mean
it for my room, where I can ask you to come when I please, and where I can
hide when any one comes you don't want me to see."