, for Taglioni, for the nocturnes of Chopin and
the cameos of Theophile Gautier. Beckford might have filled it with
orient gewgaws; Barbey d'Aurevilly could have strutted here; and in a
corner Villiers de l'Isle Adam might have sat fiercely. The room was a
tatterdemalion rococo barbarized more completely by gothic
embellishments that nevertheless gave it the atmosphere of the fantasts
with whom Michael had identified it.

"But this is like a scene in a pantomime," Maurice exclaimed.

It was indeed like a scene in a pantomime, and a proscenium was wanted
to frame suitably the effect of those fluted pillars that supported the
ceiling with their groined arches. The traceries of the latter were
gilded, and the spaces between were painted with florid groups of nymphs
and cornucopias. At either end of the room were large fireplaces
fructuated with marble pears and melons, and the floor was a parquet of
black and yellow lozenges.

"It's hideous," Maurice exclaimed.

The housekeeper stood aside, watching impersonally.

"Hideous but rather fascinating," Michael said. "Look at the queer
melancholy light, and look at the view."

It was, after all, the view which gave the character of romance to the
room. Eight French windows, whose shutters one by one the housekeeper
had opened while they were talking, admitted a light that was much
subdued by the sprays of glossy evergreen outside. Seen through their
leaves, the garden appeared to be a green twilight in which the statues
and baskets of chipped and discolored stone had an air of overthrown
magnificence. The housekeeper opened one of the windows, and they walked
out into the wilderness, where ferns were growing on rockeries of slag
and old tree-stumps; where the paths were smeared with bright green
slime, with moss and sodden vegetation. They came to a wider path
running by the bank of the canal, and, pausing here, they pondered the
sheet of dead water where two swans were gliding slowly round an islet
and where the reflections of the house beyond lay still and deep
everywhere along the edge. The distant cries of London floated sharply
down the air; smuts were falling perpetually; the bitter March air
diffused in a dull sparkle tasted of the city's breath: the circling of
the swans round their islet made everything else the more immotionable.

"In summer this will be wonderful," Michael predicted.

"On summer nights those swans will be swimming about among the stars,"
Maur