“Come in a little farther, please, dear,” said a voice from behind the door, “so I can close it.”

Burns shut the door with a bang, and turned upon the figure in the corner.  But his extended arm kept his wife away from him.  “Let me go and refresh,” he begged.  “I can’t bear to touch you after handling that unwashed lumberjack.  Just five minutes and I’ll be back.”

He was as good as his word.  In five minutes he was no longer a busy professional man, but a gentleman of leisure, with hands cleaner than those of any fastidious clubman, and clothes which carried no hint of past usage in other places less chaste than his wife’s private living-rooms.

“Now I’m ready for you,” he announced, returning.  “And I’ll be hanged if I’ll see another interloper to-night.  A man has some rights, if he is a doctor.  Morgan, up the street there, is the new man in town, and he has a display of electric lights in front of his office which fairly yells ‘come here!’ Let ’em go there!  I stay here.”

He took his wife in his arms and kissed her hungrily, then stood holding her close, his cheek against her hair, in absolute contentment.  He seemed to see nothing of the new quarters, though he was now just outside the living-room door, in the hall which ran between the two parts of the house.  Presently she drew him into the room.

“Look about you,” said she.  “Have you no curiosity?”

“Not much, while I have you.  Still—­by George!  Well!”

He stood staring about him, his eyes wide open enough now.  From one detail to another his quick, keen-eyed glance roved, lingering an instant on certain points where artful touches of colour relieved the more subdued general tone of the furnishings.  The room suggested, above all things, quiet and repose, yet there was a soft and mellow cheer about it which made it anything but sombre.  Its browns and blues and ivories wrought out an exquisite harmony.  The furniture was simple but solid, the roomy high-backed davenport luxurious with its many pillows.  The walls showed a few good pictures—­how good, it might not be that Red Pepper fully understood.  But he did understand, with every sense, that it was such a room as a man might look upon and be proud to call his home.

But he was silent so long that Ellen looked up at him, to make sure that there was no displeasure in his face.  Instead she found there deeper feeling than she expected.  He returned her look, and she discovered that he was not finding it easy to tell her what he thought of it all.  She led him to the couch and drew him down beside her.  He put his arm about her, and with her head upon his shoulder the pair sat for some time in a silence which Ellen would not end.  But at length, looking into the fire, his head resting against hers, Burns broke the stillness.

“I suppose I’m an impressionable chap,” he said, “but I wasn’t prepared for just this.  I knew it would be a beautiful room, if you saw to it, but I had no possible notion how beautiful it would be.  There is just one thing about it that breaks me up a bit.  Perhaps you won’t understand, but I can’t help wishing I could have done the work for you instead of you for me.  It isn’t the work, either, it’s the—­love.”