Each of the guests acknowledged the kindly greeting, and some general conversation ensued. Millicent looked about the great drawing-room, noting the various beautiful articles of furniture, the Venetian glasses, the pictures and rich embroideries, the thousand-and-one bits of _bric-à-brac_ which decorated the walls and cabinets of the lofty apartment. It was in truth a rarely beautiful room, the prevailing color a deep, soft crimson, the wood-work all painted white and delicately carved. Below the ceiling ran a frieze, the work of John Graham. The subject treated was the history of Cupid and Psyche. The scenes were divided into panels by twining sprays of rose-vines charmingly treated. The first represented the meeting of the two lovers, their marriage being the next in order. In the third compartment the doubting Psyche looks for the first time on the radiant beauty of the sleeping God. Next the artist had portrayed the forsaken, love-lorn bride sitting alone, crushed with grief, repenting the fatal curiosity which prompted her to peer too closely into the nature of love,--that greatest of boons, which should be accepted joyously and with thanksgiving, and to which doubt means death. The hard services required by Cytherea from the desolate Psyche were exquisitely rendered; and the final scene of the reunion of the two lovers was the masterpiece of the whole work. Psyche, radiant with new-found love and joy, her face touched with a more than mortal beauty by the grief she has endured, stands looking reverently into the face of the strongest of gods. Her rainbow wings can lift her now, to soar beside her lover, even to Olympus. Millicent admired the beautiful frieze, which the hostess confessed troubled her sorely because of the scanty raiment which she said seemed to have been the fashion of the time it represented. "Mister Graham," she explained, had induced her to keep it in the place for which it had been designed. Mrs. Shallop added that the artist had refused to follow her suggestion of adding clothing to the half nude bodies; and had, moreover, extracted a promise from her husband that he would never allow any other painter to be intrusted with thus supplementing the airy rainbow draperies of the figures. Miss Almsford was much astonished at the very beautiful interior of the great Shallop house, and soon learned that its furnishing and decoration had been intrusted to Graham, who was gifted with that rarest and most valuable of aesthetic qualities, a perfect and original taste. "It is the only house Mr. Graham has ever arranged, and he says he will never do another. He was in Europe while it was being built, and mamma persuaded the Shallops to give him _carte blanche_ to buy all the beautiful things he could lay hands upon," Barbara explained.