The smell of a pot of lilies mingled with the smell of leather bindings.

The light in the room, filtered through the leaves of an overhanging creeper, was green and gold.

It seemed to him that he must have known such a room in some other world, where he had not had to make watches all day with a glass screwed in his eye, but had abundant leisure for books and beautiful things.

Not but that there might be worse things than the watchmaking.

Over the works of the watches, the fine little wheels and springs, Walter Gray thought hard, thought incessantly.