Upon the mantel-shelf there were two china vases, some relics of a diminutive tea-service, as smooth as enamel and as thin as egg-shell, and a white centre ornament, a classic group in alabaster, preserved under glass.
Of all these things I could have told the peculiarities, numbered the flaws or cracks, like any _clairvoyante_.

Above all, there was a pair of handscreens, with elaborate pencil-drawings finished like line engravings; these, my very eyes ached at beholding again, recalling hours when they had followed, stroke by stroke and touch by touch, a tedious, feeble, finical, school-girl pencil held in these fingers, now so skeleton-like.
Where was I?
Not only in what spot of the world, but in what year of our Lord?
For all these objects were of past days, and of a distant country.

Ten years ago I bade them good-by; since my fourteenth year they and I had never met.

I gasped audibly, "Where am I ?" A shape hitherto unnoticed, stirred, rose, came forward: a shape inharmonious with the environment, serving only to complicate the riddle further.

This was no more than a sort of native bonne, in a common-place bonne's cap and print-dress.