small sitting-room with a piano and a sideboard, opening into a larger
bedroom shaped like a thick L. The short top of the L, not cut off
from the rest of the room, was installed as a _cabinet de toilette_,
but it had a divan. From the divan, behind which was a heavily
curtained window, you could see right through the flat to the
curtained window of the sitting-room. All the lights were softened by
paper shades of a peculiar hot tint between Indian red and carmine,
giving a rich, romantic effect to the gleaming pale enamelled
furniture, and to the voluptuous engravings after Sir Frederick
Leighton, and the sweet, sentimental engravings after Marcus Stone,
and to the assorted knicknacks. The flat had homogeneity, for
everything in it, except the stove, had been bought at one shop in
Tottenham Court Road by a landlord who knew his business. The stove,
which was large, stood in the bedroom fireplace, and thence radiated
celestial comfort and security throughout the home; the stove was
the divinity of the home and Christine the priestess; she had herself
bought the stove, and she understood its personality--it was one of
your finite gods.

"Will you take something?" she asked, the hostess.

Whisky and a siphon and glasses were on the sideboard.

"Oh no, thanks!"

"Not even a cigarette?" Holding out the box and looking up at him,
she appealed with a long, anxious glance that he should honour her
cigarettes.

"Thank you!" he said. "I should like a cigarette very much."