The host threw open the dining-room door on the right. Jane and Paul
entered; were alone for a few moments, during which Paul heard Barney
Bill say in a hoarse whisper: "Let me have my hunk of bread and beef in
the kitchen, Silas. You know as how I hates a fork and I likes to eat
in my shirt sleeves."

Paul seized Jane by the arms and regarded her luminously. He murmured:
"Did you hear? The dear old chap!"

She raised clear, calm eyes. "Aren't you shocked?"

He shook her. "What do you take me for?"

Jane was rebellious. "For what girls in my position generally call a
'toff.' You---"

"You're horrid," said Paul.

"The word's horrid, not me. You're away up above us."

"'Us' seems to be very prosperous, anyhow," said Paul, looking round
him. Jane watched him jealously and saw his face change. The dining
room, spaciously proportioned, was, like the vestibule, a mass of gilt
frames and staring paint. Not an inch of wall above the oak dado was
visible. Crude landscapes, wooden portraits, sea studies with waves of
corrugated iron, subject pictures of childishly sentimental appeal,
blinded the eyes. It looked as if a kindergarten had been the selecting
committee for an exhibition of the Royal Academy. It looked also as if
the kindergarten had replaced the hanging committee also. It was a
conglomerate massacre. It was pictorial anarchy. It was individualism
baresark, amok, crazily frantic. And an execrably vile,
nerve-destroying individualism at that.

Paul released Jane, who kept cool, defiant eyes on him.

"What do you think of it?"

He smiled. "A bit disconcerting."

"The whole house is like this."

"It's so new," said Paul.

He looked about him again. The long table was plainly laid for three at
the far end. The fare consisted of a joint of cold beef, a cold tart
suggestive of apple, a bit of Cheshire cheese, and celery in a glass
vase. Of table decoration of any kind there was no sign. A great walnut
monstrosity meagrely equipped performed the functions of a sideboard.
The chairs, ten straight-backed, and two easy by the fireplace, of
which one was armless, were upholstered in saddlebag, yellow and green.
In the bay of the red-curtained window was a huge terra-cotta bust of
an ivy-crowned and inane Austrian female. There was a great fireplace
in which a huge fire blazed cheerily, and on the broad, deep hearth
stood little coloured plaster figures of stags, of gnomes, of rabbits,
one ear dropping, the other