They walked back together until they reached a spot where two roads led downhill, and Weston left them.
It was some little time later when he reached Stirling's house, and was left to wait a few minutes in a very artistically-furnished room.
Its floor was of polished parquetry with a few fine skins from British Columbia spread upon it here and there, and the dainty, spindle-legged chairs, the little tables, the cabinets and the Watteau figures were, he fancied, either of old French manufacture or excellent copies.

The big basement heater had apparently been extinguished, but a snapping wood-fire blazed upon the English pattern hearth, and, for the light was fading outside, it flung an uncertain, flickering radiance about the room.

Weston, sitting down, contrasted its luxury with the grim bareness of his match-boarded cubicle in the boarding-house, and with the log shanties of the railroad and logging camps.

He frowned as he did so, for all that his eyes rested on made unpleasantly plain the distinction between himself and the girl whose room it evidently was.
Then he rose as she came in, attired in a long, trailing dress that rustled as she moved.

It seemed to become her wonderfully, and he became conscious of a faint embarrassment.