The drawing-room was worse. He had had no hand in the drawing-room, so Helwise had let herself loose upon it, with results that made him creep. He hated it, from the collection of smug pot dogs on the mantelpiece to the bad Marcus Stone imitations on the cold blue of the walls. He hated the cheap books lying about, the spindly furniture, the innumerable chair-backs bristling so fiercely with pins that you dared neither lay your head on them in front nor your hand on them from behind. There was only one comfortable chair in the room, and that was sacred to Helwise. Not that she ever actually claimed it as hers, but if you sat down on it by accident, she wandered helplessly over the wild-patterned carpet as if there wasn’t another seat within reach, until you became gradually aware of criminal poaching, and arose with shame. There were almanacs here, too, gaudy things evidently of a higher grade, matching, with a pleasantly thoughtful touch, the shrieking tiles of the modern grate. The wide fireplace of his youth had been a sacred altar, lighting a torch to many dreams, lifting the smoke of many prayers; but nobody but a Post-Impressionist could have prayed to this grate, and its brazen canopy had never housed a single vision. With a half-sigh he wandered out again and into the garden, but even here Helwise had successfully impressed herself. During one of his very rare absences she had had the fine box-borders removed, and the paths edged with glittering rockery-stones, intersected by scrubby and unwilling little ferns. Lanty never quite forgot what he had felt at sight of them. There was an old song he had been used to growl softly as he walked between the box, a tender thing called “My Lady’s Garden,” and sometimes, at dusk, after a hard day, he had vaguely thought to find her there in the cool of the evening, even as himself and Another. He had always missed her, but she had been there, he was sure of that. But when the rockery-stones appeared, she came no more; and to all his big wants and losses there was added the loss of a little dream.