evidently the latest fashion in household decoration, rather than go
mousing from place to place, only at last to pick up in the back corner
of some store this or that object which was both reasonably pretty and
reasonably cheap. When it was all over Selma was pleased with the effect
of her establishment, but she had eaten of the tree of knowledge. She
had visited the New York shops. These, in her capacity of a God-fearing
American, she would have been ready to anathematize in a speech or in a
newspaper article, but the memory of them haunted her imagination and
left her domestic yearnings not wholly satisfied.

Wilbur Littleton's scheme of domestic life was essentially spiritual,
and in the development of it he felt that he was consulting his wife's
tastes and theories no less than his own. He knew that she understood
that he was ambitious to make a name for himself as an architect; but to
make it only by virtue of work of a high order; that he was unwilling to
become a time-server or to lower his professional standards merely to
make temporary progress, which in the end would mar a success worth
having. He had no doubt that he had made this clear to her and that she
sympathized with him. As a married man it was his desire and intention
not to allow his interest in this ambition to interfere with the
enjoyment of the new great happiness which had come into his life. He
would be a professional recluse no longer. He would cast off his work
when he left his office, and devote his evenings to the æsthetic
delights of Selma's society. They would read aloud; he would tell her
his plans and ask her advice; they would go now and then to the theatre;
and, in justice to her, they would occasionally entertain their friends
and accept invitations from them. With this outlook in mind he had made
such an outlay as would render his home attractive and cosey--simple as
became a couple just beginning life, yet the abode of a gentleman and a
lover of inspiring and pretty things.