Nearest to our hearts, however, were many pictures of our own time, for
we were moderns of the moderns, after all, in spite of our efforts of
self-culture.

There was scarcely a living or recently living master in Europe whose
best works were not in our possession, so lighted and hung that even the
masters themselves would have been content; for we had plenty of space
at our command, and each picture had a wall to itself, so toned as to do
full justice to its beauty, and a comfortable sofa for two
just opposite.

But in the little room we most lived in, the room with the magic window,
we had crowded a few special favorites of the English school, for we had
so much foreign blood in us that we were more British than John Bull
himself--_plus royalistes que le Roi_.

There was Millais's "Autumn Leaves," his "Youth of Sir Walter Raleigh,"
his "Chill October"; Watts's "Endymion," and "Orpheus and Eurydice";
Burne-Jones's "Chant d'Amour," and his "Laus Veneris"; Alma-Tadema's
"Audience of Agrippa," and the "Women of Amphissa"; J. Whistler's
portrait of his mother; the "Venus and Aesculapius," by E. J. Poynter;
F. Leighton's "Daphnephoria"; George Mason's "Harvest Moon"; and
Frederic Walker's "Harbor of Refuge," and, of course, Merridew's
"Sun-God."

While on a screen, designed by H. S. Marks, and exquisitely decorated
round the margin with golden plovers and their eggs (which I adore),
were smaller gems in oil and water-color that Mary had fallen in love
with at one time or another. The immortal "Moonlight Sonata," by
Whistler; E, J. Poynter's exquisite "Our Lady of the Fields" (dated