Where it existed, it was felt as a mysterious charm belonging to the home; something which pervaded it, but had no separate being; an attractive ghost which attached itself to certain houses, followed certain people, came by chance, and was a mystery which no one understood, but every one acknowledged.

Now we know that this something which distinguished particular rooms, and made beautiful particular houses, was a definite result of laws of colour accidentally applied.
To avail ourselves of this influence upon the moods and experiences of life is to use a power positive in its effects as any spiritual or intellectual influence.

It gives the kind of joy we find in nature, in the golden-green of light under tree-branches, or the mingled green and gray of tree and rock shadows, or the pearl and rose of sunrise and sunset.

We call the deep content which results from such surroundings the influence of nature, and forget to name the less spiritual, the more human condition of well-being which comes to us in our homes from being surrounded with something which in a degree atones for lack of nature's beauty.
It is a different well-being, and lacks the full tide of electric enjoyment which comes from living for the hour under the sky and in the breadths of space, but it atones by substituting something of our own invention, which surprises us by its compensations, and confounds us by its power..