He said that he would have tea with her. She did not actually help him up the stairs, but as, with skill impaired, he swung himself from step to step, the touch of her tactful and ready hand was upon his arm, a caress rather than a sustainment. Passing the hand through his arm, she led him into the drawing-room.
Owen looked about him. He stood for a long moment in the door and looked. He then allowed himself a cautious, side-long glance at Gwendolen. Her eyes, unaware in their bland complacency, had followed his and rested upon her room.
"Oh, yes, I'd forgotten that you hadn't seen my new drawing-room," she said. "We've had great changes."
Even in his horror, for it was hardly less, he was touched to realize that Gwendolen was thinking far less of her drawing-room than of him. She might have forgotten that it had changed, had he not so helplessly displayed his amazement.
"Yes, indeed," he said. He limped to the fire and sank heavily into the deep, black satin easy-chair drawn before it. He leaned his elbow on his knee and rested his head on his hand, and as he did so he observed that before the fire stood a mahogany footstool with a bead-worked top.
"You are tired, dear Owen. Do you feel ill?" Gwendolen hovered above his chair.
"I do feel a little giddy," he confessed. "I'm not all right yet, I see."
He raised his head. It was to face the mantelpiece, with its oval, gilt mirror and crystal lustres and gilt-and-marble clock. No, there were not doves and a nest upon it. This was a finer clock than the one with the doves, and the lustres were larger, and the flowers that stood between were mauve orchids. Gwendolen always went astray over her flowers.
"Here is tea," she said, seating herself at a little mahogany table with bowed and decorated legs. "Of course you're bound to feel tired, dear Owen, after your journey. Tea will be the very thing for you."
He turned now a furtive eye along the wall. Flower-pieces, dim, flat, old flower-pieces and arid steel-engravings and tall pieces of mahogany furniture with marble vases upon them--no mistakes had been made here, for if the vases were not urns, they were of marble and in their places.
"How do you like it in this phase?" Gwendolen asked him, tactfully turning from the question of his weakness. "I love it myself, I own, though of course Chislebridge thinks I've lost my wits. To tell you the truth, Owen, I was tired of beauty. One may come to that. One may feel," said Gwendolen, pouring out the tea, "that one needs a discipline. This room is my discipline, and after it I know that I shall find self-indulgence almost vulgar."