She should have known by now that he derived it from two things--luxury
and the possibility of intrigue.
Polchester could not have appeared to any casual observer a luxurious
town, but it had for Ronder exactly that combination of beauty and mystery
that obtained for him his sensation.
He did not analyse it as yet further than that--he knew that those two
things were there; he might investigate them at his leisure.
In that easy, smiling fashion that he had developed from his earliest days
as the surest protection for his own security and ease, he arranged
everything around him to assure his tranquillity. Everything was not as
yet arranged; it might take him six months, a year, two years for that
arrangement...but he knew now that it would be done.
The second element in his comfort, his love of intrigue, would be
satisfied here simply because everything was not, as yet, as he would have
it. He would have hated to have tumbled into the place and found it just
as he required it.
He liked to have things to move, to adjust, to arrange, just as when he
entered a room he always, if he had the power, at once altered the chairs,
the cushions.
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