Not a single object in this entrance-hall pleased him. As for the gryphon-clawed feet upon which those alabaster ankles rested, he could feel them raking and combing at his very bowels! He hugged his parchment-book; he clutched his stick; but he no longer felt like William of Deloraine. He felt more like the knight’s dwarf, who vanished from sight altogether at last, calling out, “Lost! lost! lost!”

Nothing mellow or friendly, nothing either rustic or urbane, seemed to have touched, even remotely, the devastating pomposity of this furniture. There was a tiny, shapeless curl of dust at the side of one of those gryphon-claws; and he looked at it with positive relief! There was something reassuring about it. It might have been in a cottage, in a shed, in his own parlour! It was a sign that he had not been transported into a place from which there was no outlet.