the other houses to be entirely maddening later. It was a
three-story affair, with a basement kitchen and servants' dining
room. Then, of course, there were cellars, as we found out
afterward. On the first floor there was a large square hall, a
formal reception room, behind it a big living room that was also
a library, then a den, and back of all a Georgian dining room,
with windows high above the ground. On the top floor Jim had a
studio, like every other one I ever saw--perhaps a little
mussier. Jim was really a grind at his painting, and there were
cigarette ashes and palette knives and buffalo rugs and shields
everywhere. It is strange, but when I think of that terrible
house, I always see the halls, enormous, covered with heavy rugs,
and stairs that would have taken six housemaids to keep in proper
condition. I dream about those stairs, stretching above me in a
Jacob's ladder of shining wood and Persian carpets, going up, up,
clear to the roof.

The Dallas Browns walked; they lived in the next block. And they
brought with them a man named Harbison, that no one knew. Anne
said he would be great sport, because he was terribly serious,
and had the most exaggerated ideas of society, and loathed
extravagance, and built bridges or something. She had put away
her cigarettes since he had been with them--he and Dallas had
been college friends--and the only chance she had to smoke was
when she was getting her hair done. And she had singed off quite
a lot--a burnt offering, she called it.

"My dear," she said over the telephone, when I invited her, "I
want you to know him. He'll be crazy about you. That type of man,
big and deadly earnest, always falls in love with your type of