But for once Lucia was inaccessible to the humour of the name.
"Of course I shall see him," she said gravely.
CHAPTER XXXVI
He called soon after six that evening, coming straight from the
station to the house. Miss Palliser was in the library, but his face
as he entered bore such unmistakable signs of emotion that Kitty in
the kindness of her heart withdrew.
He was alone there, as he had been on that evening of his first
coming. He looked round at the place he had loved so well, and knew
that he was looking at it now for the last time. At his feet the long
shadow from the bust of Sophocles lay dusk upon the dull crimson; the
level light from the west streamed over the bookshelves, lying softly
on brown Russia leather and milk-white vellum, lighting up the
delicate gold of the tooling, glowing in the blood-red splashes of the
lettering pieces; it fell slant-wise on the black chimney piece,
chiselling afresh the Harden motto: _Invictus_. There was nothing
meretricious, nothing flagrantly modern there, as in that place of
books he had just left; its bloom was the bloom of time, the beauty of
a world already passing away. Yet how he had loved it; how he had
given himself up to it; how it had soothed him with its suggestion of
immortal things. And now, for this last time, he felt himself
surrounded by intelligences, influences; above the voices of his
anguish and his shame he heard the stately generations calling; they
approved; they upheld him in his resolution.
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