"
The wave included both Hirst and Hewet, and Hewet answered, "I should
like it immensely."
The party broke up, and Susan, who had never felt so happy in her life,
was just about to start for her walk in the town with Arthur, when Mrs.
Paley beckoned her back. She could not understand from the book how
Double Demon patience is played; and suggested that if they sat down and
worked it out together it would fill up the time nicely before dinner.
Chapter X
Among the promises which Mrs. Ambrose had made her niece should she stay
was a room cut off from the rest of the house, large, private--a room in
which she could play, read, think, defy the world, a fortress as well as
a sanctuary. Rooms, she knew, became more like worlds than rooms at the
age of twenty-four. Her judgment was correct, and when she shut the door
Rachel entered an enchanted place, where the poets sang and things fell
into their right proportions. Some days after the vision of the hotel
by night she was sitting alone, sunk in an arm-chair, reading a
brightly-covered red volume lettered on the back _Works_ _of_ _Henrik_
_Ibsen_. Music was open on the piano, and books of music rose in two
jagged pillars on the floor; but for the moment music was deserted.
Far from looking bored or absent-minded, her eyes were concentrated
almost sternly upon the page, and from her breathing, which was slow but
repressed, it could be seen that her whole body was constrained by the
working of her mind.
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