The Demi-Gods

there were tattered, important books that had got dirty because they took snuff, and were tattered because they had been crossed in love and had never married afterwards. There were prim, ancient tomes that were certainly ashamed of their heroines and utterly unable to obtain a divorce from the hussies; and there were lean, rakish volumes that leaned carelessly, or perhaps it was with studied elegance, against their neighbours, murmuring in affected tones, “All heroines are charming to us.”

In the centre of the room was a heavy, black table, and upon the highly polished surface of this a yellow light fell from globes on the ceiling.

At this table a man was seated, and he was staring at his hands. He was a man of about thirty years of age. A tall, slender man with a lean face, and, to Patsy, he was of an appalling cleanliness⁠—a cleanliness really to make one shudder: he was shaved to the last closeness; he was washed to the ultimate rub; on him both soap and water had wrought their utmost, and could have no further ambitions; his wristlets gleamed like snow on a tree, and his collar rose upon a black coat as the plumage of a swan emerges spotlessly from water.

His cleanliness was a sight to terrify any tramp, but it only angered Mac Cann, who was not liable to terror of anything but hunger.

“I would like to give you a thump on the head, you dirty dog!” said Patsy, breathing fiercely against the corner of the windowpane, and his use of the adjective was singular as showing in what strange ways extremes can meet.

This was the man to whom he had sold the gear of his companions: an indelicate business indeed, and one which the cleanliness of the purchaser assisted him to rectify, and it was in this room that the barter had been conducted. By craning his neck a little he could see an oaken settle, and upon this his sacks were lying with their mouths open and the gleaming cloths flooding at the entry.

While he stared, the man removed his fingers from his eyes and put them in his pocket, then he arose very slowly and paced thoughtfully towards the window.

Mac Cann immediately ducked beneath the window ledge. He heard the window opened and knew the man was leaning his elbows on the sill while he stared into the darkness.

“Begor!” said Patsy to himself, and he flattened his body against the wall.

After a time, which felt longer than it could have been, he heard the man moving away, and he then popped up and again peeped through the window.

The man had opened the door of the room which faced the window and was standing in the entry. Now his hands were clasped behind his back, his head was sunken forward, and he seemed to be looking at his feet, which is the habit of many men when they think, for when the eyes touch the feet a circuit is formed and one’s entire body is able to think at ease.

Suddenly the man stepped into a black corridor and he disappeared. Mac Cann heard about ten steps ringing from a solid flooring, then he heard a door open and shut, then he heard nothing but the shifting and rubbing of his own clothes and the sound his own nose made when he breathed outwards: there was a leathern belt about his middle, and from the noise which it made one would have fancied that it was woven of thunders⁠—there was a great silence; the lighted room was both inviting and terrifying, for it was even more silent than the world outside; the steady globes stared at the window like the eyes of a mad fish, and one could imagine that the room had pricked up invisible ears and was listening towards the window, and one could imagine also that the room would squeak and wail if any person were to come through anywhere but a door and stand in it.

Mac Cann did not imagine any of these things. He spat on his hands, and in the twinkling of an eye he was inside the window. In three long and hasty paces he placed a hand on each of the sacks, and just as he gripped them he heard a door opening, and he heard the footsteps ringing again on a solid flooring.

“I’m in,” said he, viciously, “and I won’t go out.”

His eyes blinked around like the flash of lightning but there was no place to hide. He stepped across the oaken chest and crouched down. Behind him, from the floor upwards, were books, in front was the big chest, and on top of it the two bulging sacks. He was well screened and he could peep between the sacks.

He stared towards the door.

The clean man came in and stood aside. Following him came a woman who was, if anything, more rigorously washed than he was. Somehow, although she was a tall woman, she seemed as light as a feather. She was clad in a delicate pink gown of such gossamer quality that it balanced and swam on the air with every movement she made. Across her bare shoulders was a lawn veiling, which also sailed and billowed as she moved. Her hair seemed to be of the finest spun gold, light as thistledown, and it, too, waved and floated in little strands and ringlets.

These two people sat down at different sides of the table, and for a time they did not speak to each other. Then the man raised his head:

“I got a letter from your mother this morning,” said he in a low voice.

The woman answered him in a tone that was equally low:

“I did not know you corresponded with her.”

The man made a slight gesture:

“Nor did I know that your correspondence was as peculiar as I have found it,” said he.

Said the woman coldly:

“You are opening this subject again.”

“I am: I have to: your mother confirms everything that I