gilt frames protected by shadow-boxes. In a corner was a
cabinet of gilt and glass, filled with Dresden-china figurines and toy
tables and a carven Swiss musical powder-box. The fireplace was of
smooth, chilly white marble, with an ormolu clock on the mantelpiece,
and a fire-screen painted with Watteau shepherds and shepherdesses,
making silken unreal love and scandalously neglecting silky unreal
sheep. By the hearth were shiny fire-irons which looked as though they
had never been used. The whole room looked as though it had never been
used--except during the formal calls of overdressed matrons with
card-cases and prejudices. The one human piece of furniture in the
room, a couch soft and slightly worn, on which lovers might have sat
and small boys bounced, was trying to appear useless, too, under its
row of stiff satin cushions with gold cords.... Well-dusted chairs on
which no one wished to sit; expensive fireplace that never shone;
prized pictures with less imagination than the engravings on a
bond--that drawing-room had the soul of a banker with side-whiskers.

Carl by no means catalogued all the details, but he did get the effect
of ingrowing propriety. It is not certain that he thought the room in
bad taste. It is not certain that he had any artistic taste whatever;
or that his attack upon the pretensions of authors had been based on
anything more fundamental than a personal irritation due to having met
blatant camp-followers of the arts. And it is certain that one of his
reactions as he surveyed the abject respectability of that room was a
slight awe of the solidity of social position which it represented,
and which he consciously lacked. But, whether from artistic instinct
or from ignorance, he was sure that into the room ought to blow a
sudden great wind, with the scent of forest and snow. He shook his
head when the maid returned, and he followed her up-stairs. Surely a
girl reared here would never run away and play with him.

He heard lively voices from the library above. He entered a room to be
lived in and be happy in, with a jolly fire on the hearth and friendly
people on a big, brown davenport. Ruth Winslow smiled at him from
behind the Colonial silver and thin cups on the tea-table, and as he
saw her light-filled eyes, saw her cock her head gaily in welcome, he
was again convinced that he had found a playmate.

A sensation of being pleasantly accepted warmed him as she cried, "So
glad----" and introduce