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 hung over the white marble fireplace. The French furniture was upholstered in rich brocades of lemon and old rose. Over the Steinway, a black Spanish shawl, embroidered in huge vermilion and orange flowers, was held in place by a rock-crystal lamp in the form of a Chinese goddess. Strewn on the tables, the desk, the mantelpiece, were more Chinese objects, birds, fish and animals, scent-bottles, carved out of ivory, jade, malachite, and moss-agate. On one of the tables stood a blue porcelain bowl filled with yellow roses, roses with so few petals that they resembled wild flowers. They had a strangely naïve air in this artificial environment. Transparent curtains of lemon yellow hung at the windows and sprawled on the jade-green carpet like the trains of ladies' dresses in 1896, and behind them, towards the light, depended further curtains of rose and deep-blue. Although the sun was shining brightly outside, only a soft light filtered through them into the room.

Byron completed his admiring appraisal by lifting the cover of a heavy, Russian cigarette box of silver, and extracting a cigarette. As he lighted a match, Lasca returned. The cigarette dropped from his nervous fingers. He stooped to recapture it.

That's right! Don't burn my carpet, she urged.

You're so beautiful!

She was wearing a dressing-gown of soft, filmy golden-brown chiffon, adorned with bands of ostrichfeather filaments which graduated in colour from a