to belie Leighton's promise. Its door was under a massive portico the
columns of which rose above the second story. The portico was flanked by
a parapeted balcony, upon which faced, on each side, a row of French
windows, closed and curtained, but not shuttered.




CHAPTER XVII


Leighton rang. The door was opened by a man in livery. So pompous was he
that Lewis gazed at him open-mouthed. He could hardly tear his eyes from
him to follow his father, who was being conducted by a second footman
across the glassy, waxed hall into a vast drawing-room.

The drawing-room might have been a tomb for kings, but Lewis felt more
awed by it than depressed. It was a room of distances. Upon its stately
walls hung only six paintings and a tapestry. Leighton did not tell his
son that the walls carried seven fortunes, because he happened to be one
of those who saw them only as seven things of joy.

There were other things in the room besides the pictures: a few chairs,
the brocade of which matched the tapestry on the wall; an inlaid spinet;
three bronzes. Before one of the bronzes Lewis stopped involuntarily.
From its massive, columned base to the tip of the living figure it was
in one piece. Out of the pedestal itself writhed the tortured, reaching
figure--aspiring man held to earth. Lewis stretched out a reverent hand
as though he would touch it.