Vance was trembling with excitement, as he always did when anyone touched on his vocation. But his recent experiences had caused a sort of protective skin to grow over his secret sensibilities—or was it that really the eyes of this good-looking young man were too close together? Vance could imagine having all kinds of a good time with him, but not talking to him of anything that lay under that skin. "Oh, I guess there'll be time for me to choose a line later," he said. "I'm in the reading stage still. And this old house interests me. Where I come from everything's bran' new—houses and books and everything. We throw 'em out when they get shabby. And I like looking at all these things that folks have kept right along—hung onto, as you say."

Lorburn Spear looked at him with interest, with sympathy even, Vance thought. For a second his smile had the fugitive radiance of his sister's. "Why, yes, I see your point: what you might call the novelty of permanence. And this place certainly has character, though old Tom Lorburn is too stupid to see it. And our Cousin Elinor had character too! Good head, eh?" He glanced up at the portrait, still with that odd air of keeping hold of Vance while he looked away from him. "You know she did a good deal to the house when she inherited it. This room expresses one side of her; her maturity, her acceptance. But when she did the drawing rooms she was frivolous, she still dreamed of dancing—she'd read Byron on the waltz, poor girl! What an appetizer it must have been to those women to have so many things forbidden! Seen the rest of the rooms? No? Oh, but they're worth it. Come along before it gets too dark."

Gaily, with his long free step, he led the way across the patterned parquet, and Vance followed, captivated by the image of a young Miss Lorburn who still dreamed of dancing, and to whom so many things were sweet because forbidden. "Yet she ended in her library… ." he thought.

Lorry Spear was a stimulating guide. His quick touches woke the dumb rooms to life, lit the dusky wax candles in chandeliers and wall brackets, drew a Weber waltz from the slumbering piano, peopled the floor with gaily circling couples, even made Vance see the dotted muslins and billowy tarlatans looped with camellias of the young women with their ringlets and sandalled feet. He found the cleverest words, made it all visible and almost tangible, knew even what flowers there would have been in the ornate porcelain vases: mignonette and pinks, with heavy pink roses, he decided: "Yes—I ought to have been a theatrical decorator; would be, if only the boss would put up the cash. But to do that they'd have to sell Eaglewood—or marry Halo to a millionaire," he added with an impatient laugh.