The young people for whom these familiar objects meant a symbolism deep-rooted in their earliest memories could hardly in fairness have declared anything positively painful in that room--except perhaps those Atlantic liners; their charges against furniture, which was unconsciously to them accumulating memories that would some day bring tears of tenderness to their eyes, could only have been negative.

Beauty had been left out, but at least ugliness had not been ostentatiously called in.

There was no bad taste.
In fact, whatever the individual character of each component object, there was included in the general effect a certain indefinable dignity, which had doubtless nothing to do with the mahogany, but was probably one of those subtle atmospheric impressions which a room takes from the people who habitually live in it.

Had you entered that room when it was empty, you would instinctively have felt that it was accustomed to the occupancy of calm and refined people.

There was something almost religious in its quiet.