The curtains comforted Rose because, although she had not remembered them all these years, she recognized them the minute she saw them. All these years they had been here, looking just as he had imagined them and as he had described them. The curtains had been here, looking like this, on the day she had not come with her father — on all the days she had not come here with him or gone anywhere with him, days and weeks and months that had followed him into eternity. She began to believe that she had been remembered at some time far back, at some moment when she had thought herself down and out and forgotten and derided. It had all been only in her imagination, that she had been forgotten. She had not been forgotten at all. She felt she had as much right in the room as any of the others who were dancing around and talking together in little familiar groups. Even though she had no job at Ramsay’s — they were hiring very up-and-coming girls there now, one or two even from Dublin — she had been in on the plans for this room, she had known as much about it as anybody, long ago; before the wallpaper was on the walls, she had known about this room, the furniture that was waiting to go into it and the carpets that had been bought for it. The two little marble-topped tables near the fireplace there — she remembered them now, although she had never seen them before. And the big sofa was against the end wall, under the landscape picture from France, as he had told her it would be. It was all as he had told her it would be. They had rejoiced together over the beautiful room that was growing in their minds. There were two small white plaster portraits on the wall, one on each side of the door that led into the dining room, and he had never been able to remember the names of the people they represented. He called them “masks.” Rose looked at them now and thought them very dull, very religious-looking, very out of place in this brilliant rich room. She thought of her father looking at them and wondering who they were. He could have asked, but everybody seemed to know, and he had not wanted to appear less well informed than the rest of them.