Page:Stella Dallas, a novel (IA stelladallasnove00prou).pdf/184

174 Underneath the Museum, Cornelius Morrison's house was like a barn at first. At least so the aunt who had lived with Cornelius before he married told Helen, when she saw it.

Helen had exclaimed, "Isn't it? All beautiful space and shadows, and room enough to dance a spring song in, if you feel like it."

The house didn't remain long like an empty barn, however, though according to the aunt it never seemed "like a really furnished house."

Helen spent hours browsing in the Museum, assimilating it slowly, piece by piece. Gradually various treasures began appearing in the rooms below. When Helen discovered, or believed she had, an affinity between some empty niche downstairs and one of the objects of art in the Museum, she united them with delight. "Trial marriages," she called them humorously to her husband. Many of them proved permanent, but there were certain corners, tables, old chests, and secretaries, "that enjoyed a constant state of polygamy," she laughed, "that adjusted themselves happily to various of the temperamental objects of art in the Museum."

You never could be sure what would be the dominant note in the long room with the old-ivory tinted walls in the front of the house. This room was Helen's own. Here, she changed the ornaments as she would the flowers, with every changing season and mood. Therefore there were few of the objects of value in the Museum that, one time or another, didn't descend to the rooms below.

Cornelius Morrison discovered his collection all over again. As Helen isolated one piece of it after