Page:Nigger Heaven (1926).pdf/53

 Olive's personal taste inclined to the luxurious. Her dressing-table was hung in lace over pink satin and her bed was covered with a spread of the same materials. On the dressing-table was laid out a toilet-set of carved ivory, an extravagance which had cost her a great deal of economy in other directions. A bottle of Narcisse Noir stood near the toilet-set. Framed, on a table, and on the walls, were many photographs of friends. A French worsted doll lay dejected in one corner.

Mary's taste was more sober. There was only one picture in her room, a reproduction of the Monna Lisa. Her bed-cover was plain white; her dressing-table austere and generally devoid of articles, save for inexpensive brush, comb, and mirror. On the shelves of a bookcase were ranged volumes by James Branch Cabell, Anatole France, Jean Cocteau, Louis Bromfield, Aldous Huxley, Sherwood Anderson, Somerset Maugham, Edmond Gosse, Elinor Wylie, James Huneker, and others. Several Negro writers were represented by inscribed copies: Charles W. Chesnutt by The Conjure Woman, James Weldon Johnson by Fifty Years, Jean Toomer by Cane, Claude McKay by Harlem Shadows, W. E. B. Du Bois by The Souls of Black Folk, Walter White by The Fire in the Flint, Jessie Fauset by There is Confusion. In addition, on her writing-table stood a photograph of her father, in a silver frame, and usually a row of a dozen or so of the latest books which she had borne home from