women; the pictures, four or five in number,
were all variations of a single theme, -- the Virgin
Mary and the Child.

A less untutored vision than his would have
caught more swiftly the scheme of color and line
in which these works of art bore their share.
The walls of the room were in part of flat upright
wooden columns, terminating high above in simple
capitals, and they were all painted in pale amber
and straw and primrose hues, irregularly wavering
here and there toward suggestions of white. Be-
tween these pilasters were broader panels of
stamped leather, in gently varying shades of
peacock blue. These contrasted colors vaguely
interwove and mingled in what he could see of
the shadowed ceiling far above. They were re-
peated in the draperies and huge cushions and
pillows of the low, wide divan which ran about
three sides of the room. Even the floor, where
it revealed itself among the scattered rugs, was
laid in a mosaic pattern of matched woods, which,
like the rugs, gave back these same shifting blues
and uncertain yellows.

The fourth side of the apartment was broken in
outline at one end by the door through which
they had entered, and at the other by a broad,
square opening, hung with looped-back curtains
of a thin silken stuff. Between the two apertures
rose against the wall what Theron took at first
glance to be an altar. There were pyramidal rows

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