The library was filled with the pallid twilight of a rainy day. Since early morning the summit of Mount Tom, a dozen miles to the westward, had been enveloped in ponderous, leaden clouds, and for two hours past the storm, travelling along the Connecticut Valley, had been deluging the slopes with autumnal ferocity. rainy day
Through the rain-drenched windows a cold white light entered, flooding the stack room with its iron tiers of slumbering volumes, and, here at the barrier-like counter, illumining faintly the rebellious brown hair of the girl who, with pen in hand, bent over the pile of catalogue cards. The library was very still, so still that the sibilation[192] of the moving pen sounded portentously loud. Now and then the rustle of a turning leaf or the scraping of feet on the floor came from around the corner of the arched doorway where sat a solitary occupant of the reading room. Save for these two the library was deserted. The hands of the clock above the commemorative tablet pointed to a quarter past twelve and the stack-boy and the assistant librarian had both gone to their luncheons.
A more prolonged scraping of feet, followed by the sound of a moving chair, caused the girl at the desk to raise her head and pause at her work. A little frown of annoyance gathered and then gave place to a smile of humorous resignation as footfalls sounded on the echoing silence. From the reading room emerged a tall, thin youth of about twenty, a youth with a[193] pale, cadaverous face lighted by a pair of patient, contemplative brown eyes which looked strangely incongruous and out of place. He carried two books which he laid apologetically on the counter.
“Excuse me, Miss Hoyt,” he said gently.
“Yes, Mr. Winkley?” she asked, looking up.
“I am very sorry to trouble you, but could you let me have Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy?”
“Have—What did you say, please?” she asked startledly.
“Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, please,” he repeated in his patient voice. She turned hurriedly and disappeared into the stack room. Once out of sight she leaned against one of the cases and laughed silently and hysterically.
[194]
“Oh,” she thought, “if he doesn’t stop it and go away I shall have to—to—I shall go crazy!”
Presently, with a final gasp, she brushed the back of her hand across her eyes and went on down the concrete aisle in search of the volume. Out at the counter, the youth, left to himself, watched her while she was in sight and then leaned across to peer at the neatly arranged cards. She had left her handkerchief beside her work. With a timorous glance about him, he reached forward, picked it up and with a quick, vehement movement pressed it to his thin, unsmiling lips. He held it so a moment, his brown eyes staring widely through the rain-bleared window as though beholding visions. Then, as her steps came back toward him, he laid the handkerchief again in its place, straightened himself and waited.
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