She ushered him into a good-sized room, where three other girls like herself were engaged in sewing.

Sitting at a table with a book, from which she had apparently been reading to them, was the woman in the nun-like dress whom he had met before.

The walls of the room were of unpainted pinewood, planed to a satin finish, and adorned with festoons of gray moss such as hangs from forest boughs.

This was tied with knots of red bittersweet berries; the feathers of sea-birds were also displayed on the walls, and chains of their delicate-coloured eggs were hanging there.

Caius had not stepped across the threshold before he began to suspect that he had passed from the region of the real into the ideal.
"She is a romantic-minded woman," he said to himself.