He had never before appreciated a plain hardwood
floor with a couple of wolfskins; it sure beat all the carpets in
creation. He stared solemnly at a bookcase containing a couple
of hundred books. There was mystery. He could not understand
what people found so much to write about.
Writing things and reading things were not the same as doing
things, and himself primarily a man of action, doing things was
alone comprehensible.
His gaze passed on from the Crouched Venus to a little tea-table
with all its fragile and exquisite accessories, and to a shining
copper kettle and copper chafing-dish. Chafing dishes were not
unknown to him, and he wondered if she concocted suppers on this
one for some of those University young men he had heard whispers
about. One or two water-colors on the wall made him conjecture
that she had painted them herself. There were photographs of
horses and of old masters, and the trailing purple of a Burial of
Christ held him for a time. But ever his gaze returned to that
Crouched Venus on the piano. To his homely, frontier-trained
mind, it seemed curious that a nice young woman should have such
a bold, if not sinful, object on display in her own room.
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