; no, it is
violet; 'tis striped with violet and flooded with purple; there are
living greens, it is full of fading blues. The dazzling sky deepens as
it rises to breathless azure, and the soul pines for and is fain of God.
White sails show aloft; a line of dissolving horizon; a fragment of
overhanging cliff wild with coarse grass and bright with poppies, and
musical with the lapsing of the summer waves.

There were in all six pictures--a tall glass filled with pale roses, by
Renoir; a girl tying up her garter, by Monet.

Through the bedroom door Mr Hare saw a narrow iron bed, an iron
washhand-stand, and a prie-dieu. A curious three-cornered wardrobe stood
in one corner, and facing it, in front of the prie-dieu, a life-size
Christ hung with outstretched arms. The parson looked round for a seat,
but the chairs were like cottage stools on high legs, and the angular
backs looked terribly knife-like.

"Sit in the arm-chair. Shall I get you a pillow from the next room?
Personally I cannot bear upholstery; I cannot conceive anything more
hideous than a padded arm-chair. All design is lost in that infamous
stuffing. Stuffing is a vicious excuse for the absence of design. If
upholstery was forbidden by law to-morrow, in ten years we should have
a school of design. Then the necessity of composition would be
imperative."

"I daresay there is a good deal in what you say; but tell me, don't you
find these chairs very uncomfortable. Don't you think that you would
find a good comfortable arm-chair very useful for reading purposes?"

"No, I should feel far more uncomfortable on a cushion than I do on this
bit of hard oak. Our ancestors had an innate sense of form that we have
not. Look at these chairs, nothing can be plainer; a cottage stool is
hardly more simple, and yet they are not offensive to the eye. I had
them made from a picture by Albert Durer. But tell me, what will you
take to drink? Will you have a glass of champagne, or a brandy and
soda, or what do you say to an absinthe?"

"'Pon my word, you seem to look after yourself. You don't forget the
inner man."

"I always keep a good supply of liquor; have a cigar?" And John passed
to him a box of fragrant and richly coloured Havanas.... Mr Hare took a
cigar, and glanced at the table on which John was mixing the drinks. It
was a slip of marble, rested, cafe fashion, on iron supports.

"But that table is modern, surely?--quite modern!"

"Quite; it is a cafe table, but