"Do you want to look up the catalogue ?" "No, I have the tickets in my bag.

The books are waiting in the 'kept books' department." I placed my hat on the leather-covered shelf, dropped her gloves into it--how delightfully intimate and companionable it seemed!--altered the numbers on the tickets, and then we proceeded together to the "kept books" desk to collect the volumes that contained the material for our day's work.
It was a blissful afternoon.

Two and a half hours of happiness unalloyed did I spend at that shiny, leather-clad desk, guiding my nimble pen across the pages of the note-book.

It introduced me to a new world--a world in which love and learning, sweet intimacy and crusted archaeology, were mingled into the oddest, most whimsical, and most delicious confection that the mind of man can conceive.

Hitherto, these recondite histories had been far beyond my ken.