a similarity of taste in household decoration, and
they had gone together to a great emporium in Boston
to choose the furniture and fittings. The lamp
in the centre of the table was a bronze column supporting
a hemisphere of heavy red and emerald glass, the colours
woven into an intricate and bizarre design, after the
manner of the art nouveau—so the zealous
salesman had informed them. Cora Ditmar, when
exhibiting this lamp to admiring visitors, had remembered
the phrase, though her pronunciation of it, according
to the standard of the Sorbonne, left something to
be desired. The table and chairs, of heavy, shiny
oak marvellously and precisely carved by machines,
matched the big panels of the wainscot. The windows
were high in the wall, thus preventing any intrusion
from the clothes-yard on which they looked. The
bookcases, protected by leaded panes, held countless
volumes of the fiction from which Cora Ditmar had derived
her knowledge of the great world outside of Hampton,
together with certain sets she had bought, not only
as ornaments, but with a praiseworthy view to future
culture,—such as Whitmarsh’s Library
of the Best Literature. These volumes, alas,
were still uncut; but some of the pages of the novels—if
one cared to open them—were stained with
chocolate. The steam radiator was a decoration
in itself, the fireplace set in the red and yellow
tiles that made the hearth. Above the oak mantel,
in a gold frame, was a large coloured print of a Magdalen,
doubled up in grief, with a glory of loose, Titian
hair, chosen by Ditmar himself as expressing the nearest
possible artistic representation of his ideal of the
female form. Cora Ditmar’s objections on
the score of voluptuousness and of insufficient clothing
had been vain. She had recognized no immorality
of sentimentality in the art itself; what she felt,
and with some justice, was that this particular Magdalen
was unrepentant, and that Ditmar knew it. And
the picture remained an offence to her as long as
she lived. Formerly he had enjoyed the contemplation
of this figure, reminding him, as it did, of mellowed
moments in conquests of the past; suggesting also possibilities
of the future. For he had been quick to discount
the attitude of bowed despair, the sop flung by a
sensuous artist to Christian orthodoxy. He had
been sceptical about despair—feminine despair,
which could always be cured by gifts and baubles.
But to-night, as he raised his eyes, he felt a queer
sensation marring the ecstatic perfection of his mood.
That quality in the picture which so long had satisfied
and entranced him had now become repellent, an ugly
significant reflection of something —something
in himself he was suddenly eager to repudiate and deny.
It was with a certain amazement that he found himself
on his feet with the picture in his hand, gazing at
the empty space where it had hung. For he had
had no apparent intention of obeying that impulse.
What should he do with it? Light the fire and
burn it—frame and all? The frame was