The joy my room gave me was, each day when I switched on the lamp, so intense that my being required its articulation and sometimes I could not see the deep mole-colored carpet and the silvery draperies at the windows for my tears. Again, the Breughel and the Vermeer and the Rembrandt prints, hanging on the ivory walls in double frames, could make me smile smugly. As large as a room, my clothes-closet was equipped with shelves for my expensive shoes, with padded hangers for my evening dresses, and with a ceiling light so that I could see to choose my costume. My bathroom was not adjoined but was down the hall a little way. Six thick, white towels, monogrammed “L P” hung about the gleaming tub. The medicine chest was filled with bottles of cologne, Miss Pride’s soap, with a tooth-powder made up by a Dartmouth Street pharmacist, and with cans of faintly scented talcum powder.

On the left wall of my bedroom, near the fireplace, was a locked door leading to Hopestill Mather’s sitting-room. And the windows above my bathtub gave on to a shaft across which I could see the windows that corresponded to mine above her bathtub. It was not until I had been in the house ten days or more that I saw her apartment. A maid was preparing it for her return from Manchester, and as I passed through the hall, I stopped to ask the girl some needless question about my laundry. I saw that it was true, just as I had imagined it, that the room and the one beyond it to which the door stood ajar was carpeted with green. In the generous bay-window was a wine-colored chaise-longue. The fireplace was in the same position as the one in the drawing-room, and in Miss Pride’s room directly below this. Over it hung a portrait of Hopestill as a child. She wore a full-skirted white dress, ballet slippers, and a green hair ribbon in her red hair. It was so striking a likeness that I could hear her voice calling across the dining-room, “Waitress! Water, please.” On either side of the hearth were wing chairs upholstered in green and wine-red stripes. Beside each was a table underneath whose glass top showed bright Italian tiles and upon which stood cloisonné cigarette boxes, match-holders and ash-trays. Against the wall opposite the windows stood a delicate Victorian writing desk, flanked on either side by low shelves filled with books still wearing their glossy, gaudy jackets. Through the distant door, I caught sight of a mahogany highboy and the corner of a four-poster bed.