I knew that giving did not impoverish her; that the food I ate was not as much to her as the crumbs that fell from my mother's table; that the room I occupied was but one in a suite of elegant apartments; yet this did not diminish my sense of obligation.
It lightened it, however, of its oppressive weight.
My room was next to Edith's.

The only difference in the furniture was in the color of the hangings.

The curtains and bed drapery of mine were pink, hers blue.

Both opened into an upper piazza, whose lofty pillars were wreathed with flowering vines, and crowned with Corinthian capitals.

Surely my love for the beautiful ought to have been satisfied; and so it was,--but it was long, long before my heart opened to receive its influence.