all be my hand. For you come here with naked fingers, while in the ordinary world—the commonplace world, outside this chamber—the men who handle vitriol and arsenic must do so with their flesh guarded. You are not like them. This is your proper sphere. I have made it so. I have fed you poison, by scruple and grain. Now comes the larger dose.''
He turns and takes a book from his shelves, then hands it to me, pressing my fingers hard about it.
''Keep this from others. Remember the rareness of our work. It will seem queer, to the eyes and ears of the untutored. They will think you tainted, should you tell. You understand me? I have touched your lip with poison, Maud. Remember.''
The book is called The Curtain Drawn Up, or the Education of Laura. I sit alone, and turn the cover; and understand at last the matter I have read, that has provoked applause from gentlemen.
The world calls it pleasure. My uncle collects it—keeps it neat, keeps it ordered, on guarded shelves; but keeps it strangely—not for its own sake, no, never for that; rather, as it provides fuel for the satisfying of a curious lust.
I mean, the lust of the bookman.
''See here, Maud,'' he will say to me softly, drawing back the glass doors of his presses, passing his fingers across the covers of the texts he has exposed. ''Do you note the marbling upon these papers, the morocco of this spine, the gilt edge? Observe this tooling, look.'' He