Oh yes, that was it, Vincent thought; the shinily varnished cheap furniture had almost disappeared, and the excellent proportions of the old rooms could be seen.  Lamps glowed from every shelf, their golden light softened by great sprays of green branches with tender young leaves, which were fastened everywhere over the doors, the windows, banked in the corner The house smelled like a forest, indescribably fresh and spicy.

“There ain’t many flowers yet; too early,” explained Mrs. Powers apologetically, “so we had to git green stuff out’n the woods to kind of dress us up.  ’Gene he would have some pine boughs too.  He’s crazy about pine-trees.  I always thought that was one reason why he took it so hard when we was done out of our wood-land.  He thinks as much of that big pine in front of the house as he does of a person.  And tonight he’s got the far room all done up with pine boughs.”

They arrived in the living-room now, where the women and children clustered on one side, and the men on the other, their lean boldly marked faces startlingly clear-cut in the splendor of fresh shaves.  The women were mostly in light-colored waists and dark skirts, their hair carefully dressed.  Vincent noticed, as he nodded to them before taking his place with the men, that not a single one had put powder on her face.  Their eyes looked shining with anticipation.  They leaned their heads together and chatted in low tones, laughing and glancing sideways at the group of men on the other side of the room.  Vincent wondered at the presence of the children.  When she arrived, he would ask Marise about that.  At the inward mention of the name he felt a little shock, which was not altogether pleasurable.  He narrowed his eyes and shook his head slightly, as though to toss a lock of hair from his forehead, a gesture which was habitual with him when he felt, with displeasure, an unexpected emotion not summoned by his will.  It passed at once.

On joining the dark-suited group of men he found himself next to young Frank Warner, leaning, loose-jointed and powerful, against the wall, and not joining in the talk of weather, pigs, roads, and spring plowing which rose from the others.  Vincent looked at him with approval.  He felt strongly drawn to this splendid, primitive creature, and knew perfectly well why.  He liked anybody who had pep enough to have an original feeling, not one prescribed by the ritual and tabu of his particular tribe.

“Hello, Frank,” he said.  “Have a cigarette?

“We’ll have to go out if we smoke,” said Frank.

“Well, why shouldn’t we?” suggested Vincent, looking around him.  “There’s nothing to do here, yet.”

Frank tore himself loose from the supporting wall with a jerk, and nodded.  Together they stepped out of the front door, unused by the guests, who all entered by the kitchen.  At first it was as though they had plunged into black velvet curtains, so great was the contrast with the yellow radiance of the room they had left.  They looked back through the unshaded windows and saw the room as though it were an illustration in a book, or a scene in a moving-picture play, the men grouped in a dark mass on one side, the women, smiling, bending their heads towards each other, the lamps glowing on the green branches and on the shining eyes of all those pleasure-expectant human beings.