overed with
circuitous lines of crackling old paint.

"Was this furniture here, Julia?" he asked.

"Not this," she exclaimed with pride.

"No wonder," he argued half to himself, "that the next generation
preferred black walnut, even with all its grapes and gewgaws! Horrible
as it was, it wasn't so orthodox and priggish and mirthless as what came
before."

He strayed out into the hall again; he viewed its stateliness, its
expurgated elegance. "Well, this has got me, Julia--seriously," he said
with a surprised realization that she was standing beside him.
"It's--it's immense."

"Oh, _that_," she cried out, "from _you_!" And slowly she stepped closer
to say something to him; but she thought better of it. "Don't you
think," she just let slip, "I've made it look at least--well--_old_?"

"As only a Westerner could want to make it look." His sense of humor
affectionately covered any lack of enthusiasm.

"Come, Jacky," she urged at last, "I'll show you all of it before lunch
is ready."

The stairs rose straight in the rear of the hall, directly opposite the
main entrance, with its border of finely traceried windows, branching
squarely to right and left two thirds of the way up. By the first door
above the side whither Julia conducted her guest she stepped fondly back
and announced:

"This, Jack, is your room. I hope you will like it."

"Yes," he murmured, distractedly gazing about him.

Despite the freshness of everything, despite the new woolen carpets,
with their correct geometric designs, ones Julia had had copied from
some battered relics which she had somehow acquired, despite the new
chintzes and the recently refinished furniture so deliberately assembled
there for the first time, despite the spickness and spanness of each
suitably collected detail of the room's decorations, a musty smell in
the air caught his breath. The floor swooped reminiscently down toward
the right; the boards of it made a stifled creak as he stepped across
them. He himself was a little unsteady. The window gave on impenetrable
fog. Hastings threw up the sash and peered out into the dampness; he
heard the sound of unseen boats groping their ways through the distance;
the water lapped and laved below him.

"Jack!" Julia called.

He turned to her, dazed, smiling in that way he had of trying to conceal
his consciousness of inattention.

"Of course, it seems plain and spare and--rather humble, after Europe. I
know _that_."

As if di