n dollars?" He made up his mind then and there and went
downstairs, walking on his heels, to tell the clerk that after all he
would engage the rooms from that date.

Chapter Twelve

Vandover took formal possession of his rooms on Sutter Street during the
first few days of February. For a week previous they had been in the
greatest confusion: the studio filled with a great number of trunks,
crates, packing cases, and furniture still in its sacking. In the
bedroom was stored the furniture that had been moved out of the
sitting-room, while the sitting-room itself was given over to the
paperhangers and carpenters. Vandover himself appeared from time to
time, inquiring anxiously as to the arrival of his "stuff," or sitting
on a packing-case, his hands in his pockets, his hat pushed back, and a
cigarette between his lips.

He had passed a delightful week selecting the wall paper and the pattern
for the frieze, buying rugs, screens, Assyrian _bas-reliefs_,
photogravures of Renaissance portraits, and the famous tiled stove with
its flamboyant ornaments. Just after renting his home he had had a talk
with the English gentleman of the fruit syndicate and had spoken about
certain ornaments and bits of furniture, valuable chiefly to himself,
which he wished to keep. The president of the fruit syndicate had been
very gracious in the matter, and as soon as Vandover had taken his rooms
he had removed two great cases of such articles from the California
Street house and had stored them in the studio.

After the workmen were gone away Vandover began the labour of
arrangement, aided by one of the paperhangers he had retained for that
purpose. It was a work of three days, but at last everything was in its
place, and one evening toward the middle of the month Vandover stood in
the middle of the sitting-room in his shirt-sleeves, holding the
tweezers and a length of picture-wire in his hand, and looked around him
in his new home.

The walls were hung with dull blue paper of a very rough texture set off
by a narrow picture moulding of ivory white. A dark red carpet covered
with rugs and skins lay on the floor. Upon the left-hand wall, reaching
to the floor, hung a huge rug of sombre colours against which were fixed
a fencing trophy, a pair of antlers, a little water colour sketch of a
Norwegian fjord, and Vandover's banjo; underneath it was a low but very
broad divan covered with corduroy. To the right and left of this divan
sto