an to a tea-pot. But she
dispensed excellent tea, and though her eyes were appropriately
yearning, her talk was quite as reassuringly commonplace as Owen had
always found it.

It was only in the course of years that the reed curtains and the
carved Indian screens and the divans ebbed away; but the change was
complete at last, and he found Gwendolen, with undulated hair puffed
over a frame, and a small waist,--large waists not having then come
in,--receiving her visitors in the most clear, calm, austere of rooms,
with polished floor, Sheraton furniture, and Japanese colour-prints
framed in white hanging on pensive spaces of willow-leaf-green wall.
Gwendolen talked of Strauss's music and of the New English Art Club, was
indignant at the prohibition of "Monna Vanna," and to some no longer apt
remark of an aspiring caller answered that to speak so was surely to
Ruskinize. He realized on this occasion that Gwendolen had become the
arbiter of taste in Chislebridge. He followed her into several
drawing-rooms and observed that she had set the fashion in furniture and
wall-paper; that some were pushing their way toward Japanese prints, and
some were even beginning to babble faintly of Manet. Five years had
passed since then, and now, on this his first visit to Chislebridge
since old Mr. Conyers's death, another change had taken place.
Gwendolen's hips were compressed, her waist was large once more, though
of a carefully calculated largeness, and only in a fine bit of the old
furniture here and there did a trace of the former green drawing-room
remain. This was certainly the most interesting room that Gwendolen had
yet achieved. There had been little character, if much charm, in the
green drawing-room; one knew so many like it. With a slight
self-discipline, its harmonies were really easy to attain. But it was
not easy to attain a mingled richness and austerity; to be recondite,
yet lovely; to set such cabinets of rosy old lacquer near such Chinese
screens or hang subtle strips of Chinese painting on just the right
shade of dim, white wall. It took money, it took time, it took knowledge
to find such delicate cane-seated settees framed in black lacquer, and
to pick up such engraved glass, such white Chinese porcelain and white
Italian earthenware. Melting together in their dim splendour and shining
softness, they had so enchantingly arrested Owen the night before that,
pausing on the threshold, he had said with a whole-heartedness