Page:The Wheel of Time, Collaboration, Owen Wingrave (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1893).djvu/108

100. The air is as international as only Parisian air can be; women, I surmise, think they look well in it; they come, also, because they fancy they are doing something Bohemian, just as many of the men come because they suppose they are doing something correct. The old heraldic cushions on the divans, embossed with rusty gold, are favorable both to expansion and to contraction—that, of course, of contracting parties—and the Italian brocade on the walls appeals to one's highest feelings. Music makes its home there, though I confess I am not quite the master of that house; and when it is going on in a truly receptive hush, I enjoy the way my company leans back and gazes through the thin smoke of cigarettes up at the distant Tiepolo in the almost palatial ceiling. I make sure the piano, the tobacco, and the tea are all of the best.

For the conversation, I leave that mostly to take care of itself. There are discussions, of course, and differences—sometimes even a violent circulation of sense and sound; but I have a consciousness that beauty flourishes and that harmonies prevail in the end.