Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/283



WAS never a light sleeper, for when I went to bed I seldom carried my worries there with me. But once my eyes were open, I was always wide awake in a second.

Just how late I slept in that strange bedroom of delft blue I had no means of judging. But I knew that I had slept well, for I wakened to find the sun high in the heavens and an absurd sense of well-being in my healthy young body. So I lay there for a few minutes, blinking contentedly about at my surroundings.

That room, I knew, was a woman's room. I knew it by the canopies of cream lace over blue silk, by the bottles and powder-puff bowl of pale azure ware on the dressing-table, by the little blue patch-box and the crystal clock in the same tone, by the cabinet de peignoir with silk-draped panel doors and the sky-colored shoe-cabinet with its five shelves of glass all empty.

It was the sort of a room any girl would love to lie in bed and study. But I had other things to do, I remembered, besides wriggling my toes over a