It was only in the course of years that the reed curtains and the carved Indian screens and the divans ebbed away; but the change was complete at last, and he found Gwendolen, with undulated hair puffed over a frame, and a small waist,--large waists not having then come in,--receiving her visitors in the most clear, calm, austere of rooms, with polished floor, Sheraton furniture, and Japanese colour-prints framed in white hanging on pensive spaces of willow-leaf-green wall. Gwendolen talked of Strauss's music and of the New English Art Club, was indignant at the prohibition of "Monna Vanna," and to some no longer apt remark of an aspiring caller answered that to speak so was surely to Ruskinize. He realized on this occasion that Gwendolen had become the arbiter of taste in Chislebridge. He followed her into several drawing-rooms and observed that she had set the fashion in furniture and wall-paper; that some were pushing their way toward Japanese prints, and some were even beginning to babble faintly of Manet. Five years had passed since then, and now, on this his first visit to Chislebridge since old Mr. Conyers's death, another change had taken place. Gwendolen's hips were compressed, her waist was large once more, though of a carefully calculated largeness, and only in a fine bit of the old furniture here and there did a trace of the former green drawing-room remain. This was certainly the most interesting room that Gwendolen had yet achieved. There had been little character, if much charm, in the green drawing-room; one knew so many like it. With a slight self-discipline, its harmonies were really easy to attain. But it was not easy to attain a mingled richness and austerity; to be recondite, yet lovely; to set such cabinets of rosy old lacquer near such Chinese screens or hang subtle strips of Chinese painting on just the right shade of dim, white wall. It took money, it took time, it took knowledge to find such delicate cane-seated settees framed in black lacquer, and to pick up such engraved glass, such white Chinese porcelain and white Italian earthenware. Melting together in their dim splendour and shining softness, they had so enchantingly arrested Owen the night before that, pausing on the threshold, he had said with a whole-heartedness she had never yet heard from him, "Well, Gwen, yours is the loveliest room I've ever seen."