"The rooms are beautiful, but a little cheerless."
"Doris, Doris, you don't deserve to lie there! The windows of course
must be opened, fresh air must be let in, and fires must be lighted.
But think of you and me sitting here side by side talking before our
bedtime."
Fires were lighted quickly, servants came in bearing candelabra in
their hands, and among them, and with Doris by my side, I imagined
myself a prince, for who is a prince but he who possesses the most
desirable thing in the world, who finds himself in the most delectable
circumstances? And what circumstance is more delightful than sitting
in a great shadowy bedroom, watching the logs burning, shedding their
grateful heat through the room, for the logs that were brought to us,
as we soon discovered, were not the soft wood grown for consumption in
Parisian hotels; the logs that warmed our toes in Orelay were dense
and hard as iron, and burned like coal, only more fragrantly, and very
soon the bareness of the room disappeared; a petticoat, as Doris had
said, thrown over a chair gives an inhabited look to a room at once;
and the contents of her dressing-case, as I anticipated, took the room
back to one hundred years ago, when some great lady sat there in a
flowered silk gown before one of those inlaid dressing tables, filled
with pigments and powders and glasses.
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