ret or Pauline or even Monica in the middle. Old-fashioned glasses
with spirals of green and white blown in their stems; silver that was
nearly diaphanous with use and age; candlesticks solid as the Ionic
columns they counterfeited, or tapering and fluted with branches that
carried the candle-flames like flowers, everything seemed as if it had
been created for this room alone. From the wall a lacquered clock as
round and big and benign as the setting sun wavered in the coppery
shadows of the fire, and with scarcely the sound of a tick showed forth
time. Guy had never appreciated the sacredness of eating in good company
until he dined casually like this at the Rectory. He never knew what he
ate and always accepted what was put before him like manna; yet he was
always conscious of having enjoyed the meal, and next morning he used to
face, unabashed, Miss Peasey's tale of ruined tapioca which had waited
for him too long.

The seal of perfection was generally set on these unexpected dinners by
chamber-music afterwards, when under the arched roof of the big
music-room for an hour or more of trios and quartets Guy contemplated
that family. The Greys could not have revealed the design of their life
with anything but chamber-music, and setting aside any expression of
inward things, thought Guy, how would it be possible to imagine them
more externally decorative than seated so at this formal industry of
art? He liked best perhaps the trios, when he and Mrs. Grey, each in a
Caroline chair with tall wicker back, remained outside, and yet withal
as much in the picture as two donors painted by an old Florentine.
Monica in a white dress sat straight and stiff, with pale-gold hair that
seemed the very color of the refined, the almost rarefied accompaniment
upon which her fingers quivered and rippled. Something of her own
coldness and remoteness and crystalline severity she brought to her
instrument, as if upon a windless day a fountain played forth its
pattern. Margaret's amber dress deepened from the shade of Monica's
hair, and Margaret's eyes glowed deep and solemn as the solemn depths of
the violoncello over which she hung with a thought of motherhood in the
way she cherished it. Was it she, wondered Guy, who was the ultimate
lure of this house, or was it Pauline? Of her, as she swayed to the
violin, nothing could be said but that from a rose-bloomed radiance
issued a sound of music. And how clearly in the united effect of the
thre