“That's just it.” He ruffled his hair irritably. “It does. Can you imagine my doing anything 'charming'? No, the only hope for this interior is for me to get depth into it, and depth won't come--it's facile.” And he stared disgustedly at the canvas. “I think I know what you mean,” Mary answered absently. She was thinking that his work had power and height, but that depth she had never seen in it. Stefan shook himself. “Oh, come along, Mary, let's get out of this. We've been mewed up in this domestic atmosphere for days. I shall explode soon. Let's go somewhere.” “Very well,” she agreed, folding up her work. “You feel all right, don't you?” he checked himself to ask. “Rather, don't I look it?” “You certainly do,” he replied, but without his usual praise of her. “I have it, let's take a look at Miss Felicity Berber! I shall probably get some new ideas from her. Happy thought! Come on, Mary, hat, coat, let's hurry.” He was all impatience to be gone. They started to walk up the Avenue, stopping at the hotel to find in the telephone book the number of the Berber establishment. It was entered, “Berber, Felicity, Creator of Raiment.” “How affected!” laughed Mary. “Yes,” said Stefan, “amusing people usually are.” Though he appeared moody the crisp, sunny air of the Avenue gradually brightened him, and Mary, who was beginning to feel her confined mornings, breathed it in joyfully. The house was in the thirties, a large building of white marble. A lift carried them to the top floor, and left them facing a black door with “Felicity Berber” painted on it in vermilion letters. Opening this, they found themselves in a huge windowless room roofed with opaque glass. The floor was inlaid in a mosaic of uneven tiles which appeared to be of different shades of black. The walls, from roof to floor, were hung with shimmering green silk of the shade of a parrot's wing. There were no show-cases or other evidences of commercialism, but about the room were set couches of black japanned wood, upon which rested flat mattresses covered in the same green as the walls. On these silk cushions in black and vermilion were piled. The only other furniture consisted of low tables in black lacquer, one beside every couch. On each of these rested a lacquered bowl of Chinese red, obviously for the receipt of cigarette ashes. A similar but larger bowl on a table near the door was filled with green orchids. One large green silk rug--innocent of pattern--invited the entering visitor deeper into the room; otherwise the floor was bare. There were no pictures, no decorations, merely this green and black background, relieved by occasional splashes of vermilion, and leading up to a great lacquered screen of the same hue which obscured a door at the further end of the room.