rare cashmere shawls, and rugs of Turkestan, and with cushions of all
kinds of oriental splendour. Strange tables of wonderful mosaic work
held ivory carvings of priceless worth; and porcelain from unknown
lands. Gods and goddesses from the yellow Gehenna of China and the
utterable idolatry of India, looked out with brute cruelty, or
sempiternal smiles from every odd corner; or gazed with a fascinating
prescience from the high chimney-piece upon all who entered.

The effect upon Hyde was instantaneous and uncanny. His Saxon-Dutch
nature was in instant revolt against influences so foreign and
unnatural. Arenta was unconsciously in sympathy with him; for she said
with a shrug of her pretty shoulders, as she looked around, "I have
always bad dreams after a visit to this room. Do these things have a
life of their own? Look at the creature on that corner shelf! What a
serene disdain is in his smile! He seems to gaze into the very depths of
your soul. I see that there is a curtain to his shrine; and I shall take
leave to draw it." With these words she went to the scornful divinity,
and shut his offending eyes behind the folds of his gold-embroidered
curtain.

Hyde watched her flitting about the strange room, and thought of a
little brown wren among the poisonous, vivid splendours of tropical
swamp flowers. So out of place the pretty, thoughtless Dutch girl looked
among the spoils of far India, and Central America, and of Arabian and
African worship and workmanship. But when the door opened, and Madame
Jacobus, with soft, gliding footsteps entered, Hyde understood how truly
the soul, if given the wherewithal, builds the habitation it likes best.
Once possessed of marvellous beauty, and yet extraordinarily
interesting, she seemed the very genius of the room and its strange,
suggestive belongings. She was unusually tall, and her figure had kept