Olive said presently, but though she spoke in jest, her voice was heavy, her eyes, too, were dark and oppressed with thought. To both of them those small and lovely flowers, shining up from the cardboard box they had come in, brought in some way they did not understand a message of foreboding, as of some dark crisis approaching, as of evil happenings still to come to pass. Bobby put the lid back in place with a quick, nervous gesture. It was almost as though he hoped in that way to shut up something he had fear of, to prevent thus its escape into the world. It was not like him. Olive, watching, looked on uneasily. The picture in both their minds was that of Miss Kayne, seated and silent, waiting for something that somehow she had long expected, perhaps because she herself had given to it that first impetus from which these happenings had ensued, in her eyes black hatred of that great library which more than once had been described as a source of pride even to the nation itself.
