Here and there upon them hung a picture: a landscape of George Morland,
lustily English, a Cotman, a Cuyp--cows in twilight--a Reynolds, faded
but exquisitely genteel. A lovely little harpsichord--meditating on
Scarlatti--stood in one angle, a harp, tied with most delicate ribands
of ivory satin powdered with pimpernels, in another. Many waxen
candles shed a tender and unostentatious radiance above their careful
grease-catchers. Upon pretty tables lay neat books by Fanny Burney,
Beatrice Harraden, Mary Wilkins, and Max Beerbohm, also the poems of
Lord Byron and of Lord de Tabley. Near the hearth was a sofa on which an
emperor might have laid an easy head that wore a crown, and before every
low and seductive chair was set a low and seductive footstool.
A grandmother's clock pronounced the hour of ten in a frail and
elegant voice as the finely-carved oak door was opened, and the
Prophet seriously entered this peaceful room, carrying a copy of the
_Meditations of Marcus Aurelius_ in his hand.
He was a neatly-made little man of fashionable, even of modish, cut,
spare, smart and whimsical, with a clean-shaved, small-featured face,
large, shining brown eyes, abundant and slightly-waving brown hair, that
could only be parted, with the sweetest sorrow, in the centre of
his well-shaped, almost philosophical head, and movements light and
temperate as those of a meditative squirrel.
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