"I can't tell at once," said Madeline slowly. "Beauty is a thing that takes time to unfold itself upon one, isn't it? But I think they are beautiful. They are certainly strange and solemn, and they intensify the dignity of this big room; but they make it seem less homelike than ever. They seem to me things to look at rather than to live with. I suppose their appropriateness depends a little on what you want to make of this place. And you do want it only for a public room, do you not, Mr. Early?" "I am afraid that is all I am capable of," said Sebastian, looking pensively at her. "You see the home feeling is beyond my achievement. It needs the feminine touch to create that ideal atmosphere. That, Miss Madeline, is above art." "It is so common, are you sure it is not below art?" Madeline smiled. "I am sure," responded Mr. Early with conviction. "It is a subject on which I have thought much since you came home last year. Never until then did I wholly realize the lack in my home and in my life. If now, in all humbleness, I am consulting your taste, it is because I have sometimes dared to hope that you, my dear lady, would one day give that final grace to this which would make it indeed a home, instead of the mere abiding place that it is now." Madeline turned upon him sharply. "Mr. Early," she said, "it isn't wholly courteous in you to take advantage of my being alone with you in your own domain to speak to me in this way." "I beg your pardon," Sebastian answered. "It was a wholly unpremeditated expression of what has long been an ardent desire. I did not mean to speak, but your own words seemed to break down the barriers of my passion. I could wish that you would permit me to put it in the form which my heart prompts; but perhaps you are right. Your fine sense of the proprieties must be my rule of conduct. I shall only trust that I may soon find a time to speak when I shall not offend your delicacy, and when, I pray, I may not offend your heart."