Mrs. Landish was nowhere to be found. She had had to go out to lunch, a melancholy maid-servant said, because the cook had just given notice; but she would doubtless soon be back. With gingerly steps Pauline entered the "living-room," so called (as visitors were unfailingly reminded) because Mrs. Landish ate, painted, modelled in clay, sculptured in wood, and received her friends there. The Vikings, she added, had lived in that way. But today all traces of these varied activities had disappeared, and the room was austerely empty. Mrs. Landish's last hobby was for what she called "purism," and her chief desire to make everything in her surroundings conform to the habits and industries of a mythical past. Ever since she had created Viking Court she had been trying to obtain rushes for the floor: but as the Eastern States of America did not produce the particular variety of rush which the Vikings were said to have used she had at last decided to have rugs woven on handlooms in Abyssinia, some one having assured her that an inscription referring to trade-relations between the Vikings and the kingdom of Prester John had been discovered in the ruins of Petra. The difficulty of having these rugs made according to designs of the period caused the cement floor of Mrs. Landish's living-room to remain permanently bare, and most of the furniture having now been removed, the room had all the appearance of a garage, the more so as Mrs. Landish's latest protégé, a young cabaret-artist who performed on a motor-siren, had been suffered to stable his cycle in one corner. In addition to this vehicle, the room contained only a few relentless-looking oak chairs, a long table bearing an hour-glass (for clocks would have been an anachronism), and a scrap of dusty velvet nailed on the cement wall, as to which Mrs. Landish explained that it was a bit of a sixth century Coptic vestment, and that the nuns of a Basilian convent in Thessaly were reproducing it for eventual curtains and chair-cushions. "It may take fifty years." Mrs. Landish always added, "but I would rather go without it than live with anything less perfect." The void into which Pauline advanced gave prominence to the figure of a man who stood with his back to her, looking through the window at what was to be a garden when Viking horticulture was revived. Meanwhile it was fully occupied by neighbouring cats and by swirls of wind-borne rubbish. The visitor, duskily blocked against a sullen March sky, was at first not recognizable; but half way toward him Pauline exclaimed: "Dexter!" He turned, and his surprise met hers. "I never dreamed of its being you!" she said. He faced her with a certain defiant jauntiness. "Why not?" "Because I never saw you here before. I've tried often enough to get you to come--" "Oh, to lunch or dine!" He sent a grimace about the room. "I never thought that was among my duties."