ideas of what she wanted, and the devices of the salesman did not
sway her. It was very pleasant to find her taking things out of my
hands with a certain masterfulness, and showing the distinctest
determination to make a house in which I should be able to work in
that great project of "doing something for the world."

"And I do want to make things pretty about us," she said. "You
don't think it wrong to have things pretty?"

"I want them so."

"Altiora has things hard."

"Altiora," I answered, "takes a pride in standing ugly and
uncomfortable things. But I don't see that they help her. Anyhow
they won't help me."

So Margaret went to the best shops and got everything very simple
and very good. She bought some pictures very well indeed; there was
a little Sussex landscape, full of wind and sunshine, by Nicholson,
for my study, that hit my taste far better than if I had gone out to
get some such expression for myself.

"We will buy a picture just now and then," she said, "sometimes--
when we see one."

I would come back through the January mire or fog from Vincent
Square to the door of 79, and reach it at last with a quite childish
appreciation of the fact that its solid Georgian proportions and its
fine brass furnishings belonged to MY home; I would use my latchkey