impersonal aspect. Madeline had never
before seen it except when thronged with people, and now that they two
stood alone in its wide empty space, she was struck with a certain
desolation in it.

"Well?" inquired Mr. Early.

"I can't tell at once," said Madeline slowly. "Beauty is a thing that
takes time to unfold itself upon one, isn't it? But I think they are
beautiful. They are certainly strange and solemn, and they intensify the
dignity of this big room; but they make it seem less homelike than ever.
They seem to me things to look at rather than to live with. I suppose
their appropriateness depends a little on what you want to make of this
place. And you do want it only for a public room, do you not, Mr.
Early?"

"I am afraid that is all I am capable of," said Sebastian, looking
pensively at her. "You see the home feeling is beyond my achievement. It
needs the feminine touch to create that ideal atmosphere. That, Miss
Madeline, is above art."

"It is so common, are you sure it is not below art?" Madeline smiled.

"I am sure," responded Mr. Early with conviction. "It is a subject on
which I have thought much since you came home last year. Never until
then did I wholly realize the lack in my home and in my life. If now, in
all humbleness, I am consulting your taste, it is because I have
sometimes dared to hope that you, my dear lady, would one day give that
final grace to this which would make it indeed a home, instead of the
mere abiding place that it is now."

Madeline turned upon him sharply.

"Mr. Early," she said, "it isn't wholly courteous in you to take
advantage of my being alone with you in your own domain to speak to me
in this way."

"I beg your pardon," Sebastian answered. "It was a wholly unpremeditated
expression of what has long been an ardent desire. I did not mean to
speak, but your own words seemed to break down the barriers of my
passion. I could wish that you would permit me to put it in the form
which my heart prompts; but perhaps you are right. Your fine sense of
the proprieties must be my rule of conduct. I shall only trust that I
may soon find a time to speak when I shall not offend your delicacy,
and when, I pray, I may not offend your heart."

"Neither now nor at any other time should I advise you to go any
further," said Madeline laughingly, for it was hard to take the bombast
of Mr. Early very seriously. He made her think now of a sort of pouter
pigeon. And Sebastian remained onl