Do
they steal away at closing time into the depths of the Museum and hide
themselves until morning in sarcophagi or mummy cases? Or do they creep
through spaces in the book-shelves and spend the night behind the
volumes in a congenial atmosphere of leather and antique paper? Who can
say? What I do know is that when Ruth Bellingham entered the
reading-room she appeared in comparison with these like a creature of
another order; even as the head of Antinous, which formerly stood (it
has since been moved) amidst the portrait-busts of the Roman Emperors,
seemed like the head of a god set in a portrait gallery of illustrious
baboons.
"What have we got to do?" I asked when we had found a vacant seat. "Do
you want to look up the catalogue?"
"No, I have the tickets in my bag. The books are waiting in the 'kept
books' department."
I placed my hat on the leather-covered shelf, dropped her gloves into
it--how delightfully intimate and companionable it seemed!--altered the
numbers on the tickets, and then we proceeded together to the "kept
books" desk to collect the volumes that contained the material for our
day's work.
Pages:
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
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