"Yes, and they thought of them and some ambitious plans were discussed. But the expense was found to be prohibitive." At that moment a guard, in his yellow uniform with brass buttons, came forward with a questioning lady at his side. They stood so close to us that we could not help hearing their talk. "What are those women doing up there?" The guard looked at the urns, surmounting the columns. "They're supposed to be crying," he said. "What are they crying about?" The guard looked a little embarrassed. "They are crying over the sadness of art," he said. Then he added somewhat apologetically, "Anyway, that's what the lecturer told us to say." The lady appealed to us for information. "What this gentleman says is true," remarked the authority at my side. "The architect intended that those figures should express something of the sadness of life as reflected in art." "Oh," said the lady, as if she only half understood. Then she and the guard drifted away. "Those people have unconsciously given us a bit of art criticism, haven't they? One of the most pictorial notes in this composition of Maybeck's is the use of these figures. But it's also eccentric and it puzzles the average looker-on who is always searching after meanings, according to the literary habit of the day, the result of universal reading. Perhaps the effect would have been, less bewildering if those urns were filled with flowers as Maybeck intended they should be. Then the women would have seemed to be bending over the flowers. The little doors were put into the urns so that the man in charge of the flowers could reach up to them. But this item of expense was included among the sacrifices." The coloring of the columns had been a subject of some criticism. The ochre columns were generally admired; but the green columns were considered too atmospheric to give the sense of support. And that imitation of green marble directly under the Pegasus frieze of Zimm's, near the top, had been found to bear a certain resemblance to linoleum. But in applying, the colors Guerin had worked with deliberate purpose. The green under the frieze was really a good imitation of marble, and the shade used on the column suggested the weather-beaten effect associated with age.