"Why, to offer suggestions, advice, anything--only speak." Ted looked about him, and his eyes rested on the grand piano. "Is it a ball, a bazaar, or an auction? And are we awake or dreaming, alive or dead?" "Can't you see, Mr. Haviland?" "Yes, I see a great many things. But what does it all mean?" Audrey sank on to an ottoman, and answered slowly and incisively, looking straight before her-- "It means that I'm sick of the hideousness of life, of the excruciating lower middle-class arrangement of this room. I don't know how I've stood it all these years. My soul must have been starved--stifled. I want to live in another atmosphere, to be surrounded by beautiful things. Don't laugh like that,--I know I'm not an artist; I couldn't paint a picture--how could I? I haven't been taught. But I know that Art is the only thing worth caring about. I want to cultivate my sense of beauty, and I don't want my room to look like anybody else's." "It certainly doesn't at present." "Please be serious. You're not helping me one bit. Look at that pile of things Liberty's have sent me! First of all, I want you to choose between them. Then I want you to suggest a colour-scheme, and to tell me the difference between Louis Quinze and Louis Quatorze (I _can't_ remember), whether it'll do to mix Queen Anne with either. And whether would you have old oak, real old oak, or Chippendale, for the furniture? and must I do away with the cosy corner?" Ted felt his head going round and round. Artistic delight in Audrey's beauty, pagan adoration of it, saintly belief in it, the first tremor of crude unconscious passion, mingled with intense amusement, reduced him to a state of utter bewilderment. But he had sufficient presence of mind to take her last question first and to answer authoritatively-- "Certainly. A cosy corner is weak-minded and conventional." "Yes, it is. I'm not in the least conventional, and I don't think I'm weak-minded. And I want my room to express my character, to be a bit of myself. So give me some ideas. You don't mind my asking you, do you? You're the only artist I know." "Am I really? And if you knew six or seven artists, what then?" "Why, then--I should ask you all the same, of course."