by inches. When at last they reached Jo's apartment they were
flushed, nervous, apprehensive. But he had not yet come in. So
they waited.

No, they were not staying to dinner with their brother, they told
the relieved houseman.

Stell and Eva, sunk in rose-colored cushions, viewed the place
with disgust and some mirth. They rather avoided each other's
eyes.

"Carrie ought to be here," Eva said. They both smiled at the
thought of the austere Carrie in the midst of those rosy
cushions, and hangings, and lamps. Stell rose and began to walk
about restlessly. She picked up a vase and laid it down;
straightened a picture. Eva got up, too, and wandered into the
hall. She stood there a moment, listening. Then she turned and
passed into Jo's bedroom, Stell following. And there you knew Jo
for what he was.

This room was as bare as the other had been ornate. It was Jo,
the clean-minded and simplehearted, in revolt against the cloying
luxury with which he had surrounded himself. The bedroom, of all
rooms in any house, reflects the personality of its occupant.
True, the actual furniture was paneled, cupid-surmounted, and
ridiculous. It had been the fruit of Jo's first orgy of the
senses. But now it stood out in that stark little room with an
air as incongruous and ashamed as that of a pink tarlatan
danseuse who finds herself in a monk's cell. None of those wall
pictures with which bachelor bedrooms are reputed to be hung. No