“Dear Harry” because all this had come to her while with secret, fond amusement she had watched Harry delightedly and entrancedly fussing about the houses they explored. The boy with a cave! The man with a home! She liked the idea of a new home, and a home with Harry, but, given outstanding features obviously essential, almost any home would have satisfied her. She was animated and interested in the choosing, but not with Harry’s interest and animation. Hers were the feelings with which she had established herself in the two-room suite at the boarding house. There any two rooms would have done; here any pleasant house would do. It was not the rooms; it was the significance of her entry into their possession. It was not the house; it was the significance of all connoted by the house. The rooms had been a stepping-off place to independence larger and to triumphs new; the house was a stepping-off place to independence, to triumphs, to battle of life and to joy of life, lifted upon a plane high above her old world as the stars, as bright and keen as they. But for Harry it was a stepping-in place. It was Harry that fussed and examined and measured and opened and shut and tested and tried and must have this and must have that. It was Harry who saw everything with the eye that was going to see it and live with it permanently and for all time. It was Harry who invested every square yard of every interior with the attributes that should be there when they therein were domiciled. Harry who said, “This front door! Rosalie, we’re going to have a front door that will hit you in the eye and make you say ‘Mice and Mumps, there’s a distinguished couple that live behind a door like that!’ None of your wretched browns and greens and blacks and reds for our door, Rosalie! We’ll have a yellow front door, gamboge. I’ve seen it on a house in Westminster. I’ll take you there. You wait till you see it. Imagine it, Rosalie, beneath that lovely old fanlight overhead. And then yellow window boxes tinted to match in every window and crammed with flowers. It’ll be a house you’ll run to get into directly you catch sight of it. Then inside here, in the hall, there’ll be the thickest rugs money can buy and the brightest light and the warmest stove. You’ll step in and shut the yellow door and, ‘Mice and Mumps,’ you’ll say, ‘this is home!’ Now, look here; here’ll be my study; I’ll have bookshelves built in all round there and there and there. Pictures there. This nook--I’ll fix a little cupboard there and keep my tools in. I’ll spend half my time our first weeks pottering about with a hammer and a pair of pliers. This place just here on the landing. Looks like a dungeon. We’ll knock out a window there and fit it up with hot and cold water as a cloak room. Now here’s your room, your--” “My study,” she had interpolated, a little apprehensive lest for her private room he should use another word.