the way through the wide hall and up the front stairs, crisp and
competent in her big white apron and black gown.

As he followed her, Roger was aware that the house had lost its
effulgence. The flowers were gone, and the radiance, and the stairs
that the silken ladies had once ascended showed, at closer range,
certain signs of shabbiness. The carpet was old and mended. There was
a chilliness about the atmosphere, as if the fire, too, needed mending.

But when Susan Jenks opened the door of the Tower Room, he was met by
warmth and brightness. Here was the light of leaping flames and of a
low-shaded lamp. On the table beside the lamp was a pot of pink
hyacinths, and their fragrance made the air sweet. The inner room was
no longer a rosy bower, but a man's retreat, with its substantial
furniture, its simplicity, its absence of non-essentials. In this room
Roger set down his bag, and Susan Jenks, hanging big towels and little
ones in the bathroom, drawing the curtains, and coaxing the fire,
flitted cozily back and forth for a few minutes and then withdrew.

It was then that Roger surveyed his domain. He was monarch of all of
it. The big chair was his to rest in, the fire was his, the low lamp,
all the old friends in the bookcases!

He went again into the inner room. The glass candlesticks were gone
and the photographs in their silver and ivory frames, but over the
mantel there was a Corot print with forest vistas, and another above
his little bedside table. On the table was a small electric lamp with
a green shade, a new magazine, and a little old bulging Bible with a
limp leather binding.