“Guess, Wolf!” she said, without a smile. Indeed, she had never looked graver or more concerned than she looked then. “I thought of it when I was out marketing in High Street the other day.”

“ The Grey Feather ?” he flung out, as he rose with a bound from his chair and groped on the floor. He had caught sight of the feather lying there at his feet. It must have fluttered out when she moved the book. As he picked it up, his contact with Christie’s floor made him think of Gerda’s floor⁠ ⁠… which had so different a carpet!

There was a moment, as he replaced the feather, when a featherweight decided it. What he fancied made him pause was a sudden memory of the confiding repose of Gerda’s expression as she bent so closely over Theodoric the Icelander ; but when he recalled all this later, the conclusion he came to was that the touch of the feather itself had restrained him!