"That is just what I meant it for, my Ethelwyn,--and to let you know what I
_would_ do for you if I could."

"I hate the place, Percivale," I said. "What right has it to come poking
in between you and me, telling me what I know and have known--for, well, I
won't say how long--far better than even you can tell me?"

He looked a little troubled.

"Ah, my dear!" I said, "let my foolish words breathe and die."

I wonder sometimes to think how seldom I am in that room now. But there it
is; and somehow I seem to know it all the time I am busy elsewhere.

He made me shut my eyes again, and carried me into the study.

"Now," he said, "find your way to your own room."

I looked about me, but could see no sign of door. He took up a tall
stretcher with a canvas on it, and revealed the door, at the same time
showing a likeness of myself,--at the top of the Jacob's ladder, as he
called it, with me foot on the first step, and the other half way to the
second. The light came from the window on my left, which he had turned into
a western window, in order to get certain effects from a supposed sunset. I
was represented in a white dress, tinged with the rose of the west; and he
had managed, attributing the phenomenon to the inequalities of the glass in
the window, to suggest one rosy wing behind me, with just the shoulder-roof
of another visible.