"I am real glad you have all come, Miss Deering. I was awful fidgety about the train's being late. Miss Almsford, I am real pleased to see you. Mister Graham, happy to see you, sir. I hope your health is better, Mister Ferrara?"
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.
The guests were shown to their rooms by the hostess, and Millicent gave an exclamation of delight on entering the apartment allotted to her. It was indeed a unique room. The walls were panelled in ebony to a third of their height, a bright light pattern in flowers running to the ceiling, and relieving what might otherwise have been sombre. The glossy black wood was carved into a wide, high fireplace, where two brass andirons, curiously wrought with twisted dragons, supported a fire whose bright blaze was most welcome to Millicent. She found the season very cold compared to the still, hot Italian summers. Below the mantel the fire shone out in welcome, but above the ebony shelf, set in the wall, was a picture which seemed fuller of light and color than the leaping flames. A Venetian scene with a terrace whereon sat men and maidens in the warm glow of the sunset, looking out over a stretch of many-toned water, in which were mirrored sky and clouds, trees, draperies, and graceful human figures. A black gondola, partly shown in the foreground, might have held the painter while he sketched the brilliant scene.
"It is my Venice!" cried Millicent, "it is my home!" Her eyes were full of tears. She caught Barbara by the arm and rapidly described to her the point from which the picture had been painted.
"Mr. Graham will be very much pleased that you recognized the spot."
"Is it his picture? Yes, I ought to have known it."