So they, both of them, took the world that was on every side of
them, put it in between them and left their personal relationship to
wait for a better time.
Maggie was childishly excited. She had, for the first time in her
life, a house of her own to order and arrange; by the middle of that
first afternoon she had forgotten that Paul existed.
She admitted to herself at once, so that there should be no pretence
about the matter, that the house was hideous. "Yes, it's hideous,"
she said aloud, standing in the middle of the dining-room and
looking about her. It never could have been very much of a house,
but they (meaning Paul and Grace) had certainly not done their best
for it.
Maggie had had no education, she had not perhaps much natural taste,
but she knew when things and people were sympathetic, and this house
was as unsympathetic as a house could well be. To begin with, the
wall-papers were awful; in the dining-room there was a dark dead
green with some kind of pink flower; the drawing-room was dressed in
a kind of squashed strawberry colour; the wall-paper of the
staircases and passages was of imitation marble, and the three
bedrooms were pink, green, and yellow, perfect horticultural shows.
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