Page:Harold Macgrath--The girl in his house.djvu/72

 the vague perfume of lavender. He could not keep his eyes off her.

"How could you do it?" she asked, abruptly. The unexpectedness of the question threw him off his balance for a moment. Naturally—his conscience being normal and unwarned—his first supposition was that she had seen his face the night before and now recognized him.

"How could I do what?" he countered, lamely.

"Sell all those beautiful things without reservation."

"Oh! Well, I never expected to return."

"It's all like a fairy-story to me. Nearly all my life has been spent in a convent school. And here I am, with Aladdin's lamp in my hand! True, I had a good deal of liberty. But the room I lived in was white and bare, and my appetite for lovely things was stirred keenly by what I saw in the galleries and museums. For several years I used to go on horseback into the country. My father insisted that I should grow up physically strong. Those hours