As Nathan accompanied her to the outer door, I went to the desk, looking for the prospectus from Heidelberg. The book which Kakosan had brought was lying face down and I picked it up, curious to know what kind of writer she would choose to keep her lover company while she was deceiving him. The title was in German: Der Traum der Roten Kammer. The cream-colored binding was decorated with a black torii between whose posts lay several scarlet flowers; beyond the gate three cedar trees were visible. Although it had been in the shelves with all the others in my imaginary room, and I had only seen the back, I had known exactly how the front panel would look! When I heard Nathan’s footsteps returning down the hall, I dropped the book suddenly as if I had done something shameful. But between the time I heard him and his entrance, the room appeared to me. This time, three positive things happened. I wondered if there were more rooms down the hall from mine and if the buildings forming the court had a continuous passageway. Simultaneously a German word, Gesäusel, came into my mind and I seemed to stand in the doorway of the room, remarking the onomatapoeia of the word which meant “murmuring.” Moreover, I recognized the writing desk as Louisa May Alcott’s, on display in the Alcott house in Concord which old Mrs. McAllister had taken me one day to see. Upon this desk and under glass, I thought, had been Miss Alcott’s diary, opened to pages of small, unreadable writing with the coppery look of aged ink. The town, from the windows of this room, eternally dead amongst its elegant trees, had seemed grandly harmless, and the glassed-in meditations of the gentlewoman were like a last testament begun at birth, like a happy, lifelong requiescat, and I remembered feeling as if I were in a different century. My lame and wattled companion, smelling of some faint, old-fashioned scent, had said to me, “Do you like the room? It is what I call a gentle place.” But Louisa May Alcott’s was not my room and we had not gone there at sunset, but in the early afternoon. Philip and Hopestill had driven to Walden Pond after luncheon to watch the skating, and Mrs. McAllister had said to me, “We mustn’t stay in on this golden day. Let me take you to the Alcott House. It is closed for the winter, but the caretaker will let me in.” And we had gone out in the pure yellow light of the winter afternoon.