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 the eye. Persian rugs made pleasant splashes on the polished oak floors. On the walls were photographs of subjects not unknown to the world: Veronese's Marriage at Cana, Watteau's Pierrot, Ingres's La Source. . . . The selector evidently had been prejudiced in favour of the Louvre.

There were also a few books in a case and on the centre-table in the living-room: Alice in Wonderland, The Way of All Flesh, Ethan Frome, Daughters of the Rich, The Spoon River Anthology, Crome Yellow, The Three Black Pennys, Three Soldiers, Figures of Earth, Gentle Julia, Memoirs of a Midget, and a book of poems by Witter Bynner. There were a few magazines: current numbers of the Atlantic Monthly, the Saturday Evening Post, the Dial, Harper's Bazar, the London Mercury, the Nation, the Cosmopolitan, and the Police Gazette. Harold fingered these periodicals, without much more than taking in their titles. Only the Police Gazette was strange to him, and caused him to wonder why his father had chosen that. For, apparently, every object in the apartment had been carefully chosen.

Drains interrupted his revery.

Will you have a bath, sir? I have laid out your dinner clothes.

What time is it, Oliver?

It is a quarter to six, sir.

And where do I dine?