I walked past a modern apartment house, and past one or two remodelled houses, to the little houses in their pristine style. I wondered if Nicholas Van Suydam knew that it was in him to build the greatest of the towers now thrusting their insolent heads skyward; and I reflected that the towers might be in his imagination, but the old red brick of New York had always been in his blood. Not for a moment did I doubt which of the two had selected this house. Home means the opposite of a man’s work, while a woman carries her home with her, even, when necessary, into the office. I went up the high and narrow stoop, liking the house more and more as I noticed that even the basement windows were charmingly curtained and as I pulled the shiny brass knob of the old-fashioned bell. I smiled at the house, and the house, I felt, smiled back at me, personally good-natured about it. Home means a house that smiles inside and out. Through the curtains of the drawing-room windows I saw a chintz easy-chair, a smoking stand beside it and flowers beyond it. To the elderly eyes of Mrs. Van Suydam, accustomed as they were to what was undoubtedly the austerity of the Washington Square mansion, this aspect of a cheery sudden blooming must have seemed ominous of early departure. A warm welcome awaited me behind the white painted door. Eva’s personal maid, Mattie, smiled broadly. But she had time to whisper: “Miss Dinah, please ma’am lemme speak to you jes’ a minute ’fore you goes?” I started up the flight of stairs to the second storey. “The door towards the back, Miss Dinah,” Mattie called after me, intelligently staying at the foot of the stairway’s drag on the heart. Eva had a way of enveloping a guest in a greeting the warmth of which became at once a recitation of her own affairs. “Oh, darling--oh, I’m so glad to see you! If you only knew how I need to talk with you!” “H-m-m,” I remarked, if this exhalation of the breath can be called a remark. “Over the telephone, you didn’t impress me as feeling so strongly about seeing me.” She paid no attention to this. “Oh--” she cried on a rising note--“if you only knew! Everything is going to pot!” Holding me by the hand, she dragged me into her study, dashing past the chairs, pushing me on the day-bed and throwing herself down beside me to fix her eyes on my face. “Everything is wrong,” she wailed. She had a long and slender and round throat, and the hollows at the base were delicately modelled. But her face had begun to suggest wasted years; it was the face of one to whom already life had brought disillusion. I thought her more nervously upset than I had ever before seen her.