Just now she was wandering about the rooms, exclaiming with wonder.  Everything here was so quiet and so harmonious that at first one’s suspicions were lulled.  It was simplicity, but of a strange and perplexing kind—­simplicity elaborately studied.  It was luxury, but grown assured of itself, and gazing down upon itself with aristocratic disdain.  And after a while this began to penetrate the vulgarest mind, and to fill it with awe; one cannot remain long in an apartment which is trimmed and furnished in rarest Circassian walnut, and “papered” with hand-embroidered silk cloth, without feeling some excitement—­even though there be no one to mention that the furniture has cost eight thousand dollars per room, and that the wall covering has been imported from Paris at a cost of seventy dollars per yard.

Montague also betook himself to gazing about.  He noted the great double windows, with sashes of bronze; the bronze fire-proof doors; the bronze electric candles and chandeliers, from which the room was flooded with a soft radiance at the touch of a button; the “duchesse” and “marquise” chairs, with upholstery matching the walls; the huge leather “slumber-couch,” with adjustable lamp at its head.  When one opened the door of the dressing-room closet, it was automatically filled with light; there was an adjustable three-sided mirror, at which one could study his own figure from every side.  There was a little bronze box near the bed, in which one might set his shoes, and with a locked door opening out into the hall, so that the floor-porter could get them without disturbing one.  Each of the bath-rooms was the size of an ordinary man’s parlour, with floor and walls of snow-white marble, and a door composed of an imported plate-glass mirror.  There was a great porcelain tub, with glass handles upon the wall by which you could help yourself out of it, and a shower-bath with linen duck curtains, which were changed every day; and a marble slab upon which you might lie to be rubbed by the masseur who would come at the touch of a button.

There was no end to the miracles of this establishment, as Montague found in the course of time.  There was no chance that the antique bronze clock on the mantel might go wrong, for it was electrically controlled from the office.  You did not open the window and let in the dust, for the room was automatically ventilated, and you turned a switch marked “hot” and “cold.”  The office would furnish you a guide who would show you the establishment; and you might see your bread being kneaded by electricity, upon an opal glass table, and your eggs being tested by electric light; you might peer into huge refrigerators, ventilated by electric fans, and in which each tiny lamb chop reposed in a separate holder.  Upon your own floor was a pantry, provided with hot and cold storage-rooms and an air-tight dumb-waiter; you might have your own private linen and crockery and plate, and your own family butler, if you wished.  Your children, however, would not be permitted in the building, even though you were dying—­this was a small concession which you made to a host who had invested a million dollars and a half in furniture alone.