feel," said Gwendolen busying
herself hospitably with his little plate and hot, buttered toast, "that
I've grown cleverer since living in this one."

Owen, while she talked and while he drank his tea, had been more frankly
looking about him. Flagrant as was the plagiarism, Gwendolen, as before,
had protected herself by a more illustrious achievement. It was a
stately, not a staid room; it carried the idea higher, and thereby
missed it. It was not an amusing room, nor witty, to any one who had
seen the original. It was impressive, oppressive, almost forbidding.
Gwendolen, for one thing, had had more space to fill. The naivete of
mere flower-pieces would not furnish her walls, and she had lapsed into
sheer ugliness with the large and admirably accurate steel-engravings.
Caution, too, had been mistakenly exercised here and there; the black
satin furniture had no antimacassars and the centre-table no ornament
except a vase of orchids and calf-bound books.

Owen felt no indignation; he would always remain too fond of Gwendolen,
too tolerant of her folly, to feel indignant with her; it was with a
mild but final irony that he brought his eyes back at last to his
unconscious and hapless cousin. And he wondered how far Gwendolen had
gone, how far she could be made to go. "There's only one thing that it
lacks," he said. "Shall I tell you?"

"Oh, _do_" she urged, beaming over her tea. "You know how much I value
your taste."

"Oh, I haven't much taste," said Owen, "I've never gone in for having
taste. And doesn't your room prove that taste is a mistake if indulged
too far? It's more a sense of literary fitness I allude to. Yours is
meant to be a soulless room, isn't it? That's your intention?"

"Exactly," said Gwendolen, with eager apprehension; "that is just it--a
soulless room. One is sick of souls, just as one is sick of beauty."

"Exactly," Owen echoed her. "But, since you have here a travesty of
beauty, what you need to complete your idea is a travesty of soul. You
need a centre that draws it all into focus. You need something that,
alas! you might have had, and have lost for ever. The white pagoda,
Gwendolen, that Mrs. Waterlow found. Your room needs that, and only
that, to make it perfect."

He spoke in his flat, weak invalid's voice, but he was wondering, almost
with ardour, if Gwendolen, this touchstone applied, would suspect or
remember and, from penitence or caution, redeem herself by a confession.
For a moment,