Her flat was in Cork¹ Street. As soon as they entered it the man remarked on its warmth and its cosiness², so agreeable after the November streets. Christine only smiled. It was a long, narrow flat—a small sitting-room³ with a piano and a sideboard, opening into a larger bedroom shaped like a thick L. The short top of the L, not cut off from the rest of the room, was installed as a cabinet de toilette, but it had a divan⁴. From the divan, behind which was a heavily curtained window, you could see right through the flat to the curtained window of the sitting-room. All the lights were softened⁵ by paper shades of a peculiar⁶ hot tint⁷ between Indian red and carmine⁸, giving a rich, romantic effect to the gleaming pale enamelled furniture, and to the voluptuous⁹ engravings after Sir Frederick Leighton, and the sweet, sentimental¹⁰ engravings after Marcus Stone, and to the assorted¹¹ knicknacks. The flat had homogeneity, for everything in it, except the stove, had been bought at one shop in Tottenham Court Road by a landlord who knew his business. The stove, which was large, stood in the bedroom fireplace, and thence radiated celestial¹² comfort and security throughout the home; the stove was the divinity of the home and Christine the  priestess; she had herself bought the stove, and she understood its personality—it was one of your finite gods.

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