Page:Conflict (1927).pdf/341

 purple and red. 'Charming! Like a salpiglossis!' Roger had exclaimed the first time he had seen the room in the firelight. Cicely had felt fully repaid for all her pains. Roger's praise was very dear to her.

A similar metamorphosis had taken place in every room in the house. The typical living-room of the nineties, over-furnished with armchairs and sofas upholstered and tufted, overhung with oil-paintings framed in heavy gilt, over-carpeted with oriental rugs laid on top of padded Wilton, was now as clean and chaste as a trimmed forest; its bare waxed floors, with only an occasional rug here and there, dimly reflecting the slender ankles of a duck-footed table, the delicate legs of a Sheraton sofa, and other lovely tapering shadows of old forms and shapes, undraped, uncovered, sparsely distributed. There was little upholstered furniture in the room. One saw through the open backs of old chairs, space beyond, and vistas. But it was a cool, formal room. Cicely preferred the warm purple and red to-night, and the intimacy of the closely crowding books, and two armchairs.

Beside one of the armchairs there was a low table upon which had already been placed cigarettes and a tray with coffee. Cicely sat down in the chair close beside the low table. Roger sat down in the chair close beside hers. The evening paper, carefully unfolded had, as usual, been placed upon the arm of