ing' as if you'd tried to furnish a room to
imitate one in Cinderella's palace, as 'interesting' as if you'd done it
Louis Sixteenth, or--or--its meaning is hardly more personal to you than
the room you furnished in Munich that winter."--She blushed admiringly
at memory of their first meeting.--"The problem appealed to you, and you
made it charming. But to me--"

"You really hate it," said Julia, determined to face the facts.

"I really love it," he retorted sadly, "the way you couldn't help loving
a parent, even though you mightn't believe in him."

"Jack," she characteristically cried out to him again, "there is one
thing more that I hardly dare show you then. You'll think me such a
fool. I--"

A servant appeared to announce that luncheon was ready.

"Don't say anything to _them_ against it," she told him on the way down.

That wasn't, however, what made him silent during the meal. He took
little part in the conversation except when Mr. and Mrs. Elliott plied
him with questions, which he then found himself answering with only
unsatisfactory vagueness--answers that he could do nothing, not even
when Julia flew tenderly to his rescue, to make any better. Yes, he
liked the house, he said gravely. It was a nice old house. And he
thought how murky, despite its new coats of cleaning, was that far
corner up near the ceiling. No, he wasn't sorry, he responded, that he
had left the Ecole des Beaux Arts to devote all his time to painting; it
was the one thing he was suited for. Yes, his foreign great-grandfather
had been a portrait-painter. He couldn't remember what his name was.
Tremaine? Henry Tremaine. That was it. Julia was looking hard at him.
She was gazing down at her plate. He knew he had eaten nothing. He
could not eat. No, he wasn't at all hungry. Why was it so chilly? he
thought. Doubtless he had picked up a germ. The house, he muttered to
himself, was on his nerves. It was so everlastingly gloomy! Julia had
reinhabited it too authentically. "Eberdeen Manor"--"Mr. Eberdeen's
House." What names!

An hour afterward he told Julia he was dead sleepy and that, contrary
to all his habits, he was going up-stairs to take a nap. Dinner was
at seven? All right, he would be in better shape by then. He felt
wretchedly, but he didn't say so.

Out in the hall he paused a moment at the foot of the wide lower
staircase. The ticking of a good many clocks came to him from different
parts of the house; they seemed to focus the