o lack of inspiring confidence. It did
not even cross her mind that she looked tired. She was in no way
thwarted by the knowledge that she was not so young, not so pretty
as when first she had known him. The opportunity was too great for
that. It had fallen so obviously at her feet, that she felt it was
meant for her.

She shuffled her feet on the cold clean matting and said again, "I'd
have a nice thick carpet--"

"What colour?"

She looked up to the ceiling to think--not at the room around her.

"I don't know--Turkey red, I think--that's warmest. You know my
carpet--well, it used to be nice. It's worn a bit now and there's
not so much colour in it as when it was new. That was Turkey red."

"And what else?" He sat on the corner of an old table and smoked his
pipe--swinging his legs and looking at her.

"Well, I'd have electric lights instead of these candles--you can't
expect a woman to see with candles;--'lectric light's twice as cheap
and it's much brighter. And they make lovely new fittings now--quite
inexpensive--oxidized copper, I think they call it; I like brass best
myself."

"You think brass is better?"

"Yes; don't you? Those brass candlesticks that you've got are all
right, only they're so plain."

"You like things more ornate?"

"More what?"

"More ornate--more highly finished--more elaborate?"

"Yes; don't you?"

He took no notice of that question. "What else would you do?" he asked.
The smoke curled up in clouds from the bowl of his pipe as he sat
listening to her.

She looked round the room contemplatively.

"Oh--lots of things," she said. "I'd have a sofa--one of those settee
sort of things--"

"Upholstered in red?"

"Yes--to go with the carpet. And a comfortable armchair--really
comfortable, I mean--something that you could chuck your legs about
it--less like a straight jacket than this thing I'm sitting in."

"Upholstered in red?" he repeated.

"Um--of course."

"Then how about this wall-paper?" he questioned. "It's green--do you
think that would go with all the red?"

She looked round the walls, then tried to blur her eyes in an effort
to give scope to her imagination. She put her whole heart into it.
This was the chance of her life. Thrilling through her, like some
warm current that forces its way through cold water, was the
consciousness that she was making him seriously consider the
benefits of having a woman to live with him, to look after his needs,
attend to his co