Mrs. Pulsifer? No—she wasn't in, the young man said in surprise, as if Vance had asked something almost too ridiculous to be worth answering. But as he spoke, at the far end of a perspective of marble and dusky rugs and majestic stairway Vance saw a figure flit forward and hesitate. "Oh, Mr. Weston—it is Mr. Weston? Why, I am out, really … I'm due at the other end of nowhere at this very instant… ." Mrs. Pulsifer stood before him, wrapped in furs, her long jade earrings making her face narrower and more anxious than ever under the swathings of her close little hat. "But do come in all the same—just for a minute, won't you?" Her tone was half aggrieved, half entreating, she seemed to want him to say yes, yet not to forget that she had just cause for resentment.

Vance was looking curiously about him; at that moment the house interested him more than its owner. "Well go upstairs—you really don't mind walking?" she queried, implying that of course there was a lift if he did; and he followed her across the many-coloured paving of the hall, up the wide staircase with its ornate rail of steel and gilding, across another hall and through a great room with shadowy hangings full of figures and trees and colonnaded architecture. Vance had never been in a house so big and splendid, never even imagined one. From the room of the tapestries they passed to another, all in dark wood, with pictures on the panels, and great gilt standards bearing lights; and finally came to a small circular apartment where there were forced flowers in porcelain bowls, more pictures, books, and low wide armchairs covered with dove-coloured silk. Vance gazed at it all, enchanted. "Do you live here all alone?" he asked.

She looked at him in surprise. "Do I—? Why, of course, yes. How funny of you! What did you think—?"

"I thought maybe the house was divided up into apartments, it's so big."

"Well, it might be," she admitted, sighing. "Sometimes I wish it were. It's horribly lonely, having it all to myself." She sighed again. "I hate big houses, don't you?"

His captivated eyes were still scanning the long vista of rooms. "No; I think they're great—when they're like this … all the space and the height and the quietness… ."